


The Avengers Save Christmas

by generalzero



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas AU, Gen, Merry Christmas!, Natasha might be a doll, Nick Fury is Santa Claus, Oh yes, Steve Rogers is Rudolph, Thor is Prince of the Island of Lost Toys, Tony Stark is the Grinch, and Phil is an Elf, but she will still kick your ass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4362047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalzero/pseuds/generalzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a vengeful toy declares war on the North Pole, St. Nick recruits a team of extraordinary people to save Christmas: the technologically savvy Grinch, the highly volatile Jack Frost, a red-nosed reindeer from the turn of the century, and a pair of expert reconnaissance elves. </p><p>Christmas AU that follows the movie's general plot. The idea is crack; the execution is serious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twas the Night Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas! [It's July, you say? No, I don't believe you.]
> 
> This story was born from the premise "What if The Avengers was a Christmas story?" and not "Can I rewrite The Avengers in Christmas-speak?" So I am reframing each of the Avengers as a particular holiday icon and setting the conflict around the North Pole. This is not just a rewrite. I am borrowing heavily from Whedon's excellent work but I am also adding exactly whatever else pleases me. Hopefully it will please you too.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own The Avengers. Or Christmas, for that matter. This chapter quotes heavily from the movie.
> 
> Rating: A shade more kid-friendly than The Avengers. This is a Christmas story, after all…
> 
> Please enjoy and leave comments!

It was Christmas Eve, and the North Pole was a madhouse. Not the North Pole people saw on maps; that was just a frozen silent patch of uninhabited tundra. The real North Pole, also known as Santa’s workshop, was thousands of feet above it, suspended in the air like a castle on a cloud by a combination of magnetic waves and children’s dreams. Tonight those dreams were stronger than ever, as children across the world dreamt of sugar-plums and tomorrow’s presents, and the inhabitants of the North Pole were bustling about in a chaotic frenzy to make sure everything went exactly right on this, the most important day of the year.

Last minute presents were being wrapped and tagged, most of them for kids from the yearly list of pardons St. Nick bestowed on Naughty List kids. Elves were teleporting in from their reconnaissance station all over the world after a year of watching for children and keeping the existence of the North Pole hidden from adults. Reindeers and sleigh mechanics were double checking every nut and bolt of the sleigh and every inch of the launch pad. Mrs. Claus was hovering menacingly over everything, seemingly everywhere at once, nabbing elves who’d been working triple shifts and forcing them to go to bed. Everything was chaos, but so far nothing had gone wrong.

Oh, there were little things, like the folks in Legal complaining that a red and blue spider web suit was definitely a Halloween costume and should not be given out for Christmas; or the several hundred ant farms that had inexplicably shrunk to the size of a pins upon being tagged for a “Hank Pym.” There was also the ongoing debate about whether it was appropriate to leave tritium in a stocking if owning tritium was illegal in the receiver’s local area. These sort of problems occurred every year, and they would inevitably be fixed at the last possible moment by either St. Nick himself (“Absolutely no tritium is going in anybody’s stocking, ever. This is Christmas, not Armageddon!”) or Mrs. Claus (“Well, if they shrunk then you won’t need as much paper for wrapping. Just put them all in one box.”) and even, occasionally, Head Elf Phil (“—subsection 43, paragraph 2a, you’ll see that costumes are perfectly legal as long as… Look, just wrap it up and put in the sleigh, okay?”). So everything was going well until one of the teleportation rigs the elves were coming in from started malfunctioning.

~o~o~

Mrs. Claus was resolving a packing dispute down on the lowest level of the North Pole when she got a call from Phil; she could glance out the floor-to-ceiling windows and see the world covered in ice below. She waved away both the elves she was talking to and turned on the communicator in the fluffy white ball of her Christmas hat. Installing those hatcomms had been a lifesaver; they were one of the few technological advances adopted recently at the Pole that nobody complained about.

“Mrs. Claus here.”

“Maria, this is Phil. We have a problem up on T-level. I think you better come check it out. Both of you.”

T-level was one of the highest, largest levels; it was where all the teleportation rigs were installed. Maria could not imagine any problem with the tele-rigs serious enough to drag St. Nick out of the Atrium when he was due to take off in twenty minutes. If worst came to worst she would rather leave a few elves stranded at their posts for the night than interrupt the night’s tenuous schedule. On Christmas Eve the sleigh launch came first. Maria resisted the urge to tell Phil to deal with it himself—Phil was the most capable, level-headed elf she’d ever met. If he said it was serious… “Do you really want me to drag Nick up there?”

“Yes. Promptly, if possible.”

Promptly, if possible. Maria snorted. That was as close to a demand as any elf at the Pole dared make of her, and Phil was the only elf who could regularly come that close without being reassigned to duty somewhere in New Zealand or the Sahara Desert. Maria was not a woman to be trifled with. She was St. Nick’s right hand, and seemed to be nigh omnipresent. She was first ever holder of the title “Mrs. Claus” to not actually be married to Mr. Claus. She had gotten the position through sheer tenacious competence, and although elves gossiped about it and the World Holiday Council looked down their noses, neither she nor St. Nick paid any attention. St. Nick liked her because she got the job done and he didn’t have to bother with any silly romance. Maria liked him because he let her do her job and had promised to hand over the title of “Santa Claus” to her when he retired in a couple of centuries. Together they made perhaps the least sentimental “couple” the North Pole had ever had in charge—but they were also the most devoted and most efficient. Maria knew this just as well as she knew that many people thought that Santa’s Workshop ought to be a little more cheerful and a little less organized. Less organization, Maria thought, was exactly what got you things like malfunctioning transporters on Christmas Eve. “We’ll be there. Keep me updated.”

Within minutes Mrs. Claus, St. Nick and Head Elf Phil had convened on the staircase landing just above the Atrium. They continued upwards to T-Level without breaking pace.

“How bad is it?” asked St. Nick.

Phil looked unusually concerned. “That’s the problem, sir. We don’t know. Teleporter B4 went offline about forty-five minutes ago, and after we called Selvig it came back on and started absorbing most of the power out of Dream Catcher Four.”

“So he screwed up fixing it?”

“He hadn’t even touched it, sir. He hadn’t got there yet. Spontaneous event.”

Maria frowned. If this was a mechanical glitch it was the strangest one she’d ever seen. And to happen on Christmas Eve… Either this was incredibly bad luck (and if it was she’d be having a stern talk with some leprechauns come St. Patrick’s Day), or someone was doing something they shouldn’t be. She glanced at St. Nick for his reaction, but he was as cool and unreadable as ever. “Why didn’t Selvig shut it down?” she asked.

“He tried; the power disturbance just got bigger. I sent someone down to DC4 to check the engines but that was a dead end. That’s when I called for an evacuation of everyone working above T-Level and in the DC4 engine rooms. I left Selvig on site along with the last elf to come through the rig. He can brief you on what’s been happening.”

“How long until evac is complete?” asked Nick. 

“Twenty minutes.”

“Do better.”

“Yes sir.” Phil turned around and headed back downstairs, speaking urgently into his hatcomm. “Get me two lifts for levels five and…”

St. Nick turned to Maria. “I want you to get anybody not working on evac up to level eight and bring the Phase 2 materials down to a safer level. If this power disruption starts having spillover effect on the DC4 engine I don’t want it affecting those toys.”

“Nick, is that really a priority? If there’s a risk of engine failure we should be getting closer to the ground, evacuating this year’s presents, and securing the Hourglass. It’s only two hours to midnight. You still have a sleigh to catch.”

“Turn the Hourglass around again if you’re worried about time, Maria, but get it done. I want every piece of Phase Two off of level eight.”

Maria’s toned frosted slightly. “Yes, sir.” She turned on her own hatcomm. “This is Mrs. Claus to Sedgwick. Patch me through to…”

~o~o~

St. Nick was not, perhaps, the best name for the current owner of the position of Santa Claus. Nick had been his name before he took the position, although the addition of “St.” was certainly pushing the limits of believability. It was better than Kris Kringle or Santa Claus, though, which were both unbearably cheerful sounding. Contrary to popular belief at the North Pole, Nick could be cheerful, but he reserved it for children. Certain people (read: the World Holiday Council) often questioned how such a stoic, silent man got to be Santa Claus, but no one had ever pried the reason out of him. Nick considered his motivations for becoming Santa Claus to be on a need-to-know basis, and as far as he was concerned, nobody needed to know. What mattered was that he was good at his job.

Nick cast his one good eye around level four as he entered the huge transport room, looking for Selvig, the North Pole’s head technical specialist. “Talk to me, Selvig.”

“B4 is misbehaving.”

Nick didn’t frown, but the crinkling of his brow made his displeasure evident. Selvig was older than dirt, smarter than hell and one of very few people at the North Pole who were not intimidated by him. Nick suspected this wasn’t so much due to any inherent bravery as to a complete obliviousness to anything not made of mechanical parts and run on steam. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“It’s not funny at all. B4 isn’t supposed to be behaving. It’s like it suddenly has a mind of its own.”

“When can you pull the plug?”

“I already have. It just keeps turning back on. At this point I’m not sure even shutting down DC4 would do the trick. The telerig keeps throwing off interference: magnetic fields, temperature swings—did you notice how cold it is in here? It’s nothing dangerous though…”

“Cold can be dangerous,” Nick said dryly, thinking of the North Pole’s last run in with the Abominable Snowman. Nick analyzed the situation—he had more questions than options, but he intended to get them answered. “Where’s the elf that came through it?”

“The spook? Hiding somewhere, as usual.”

Nick frowned at the slangy nickname for recon elves but decided he didn’t have time to reproach the mechanic. “Elf! Report.”

A small spry brown-haired elf dropped down from some perch in the air above and stood at attention. The number of silenced bells on his uniform showed that he was a high-ranking recon worker. St. Nick recognized him; he was not just a spook, he was one of Phil’s special operatives. They had met several times before, mostly when the elf had gone AWOL or pulled some insubordinate stunt. If he wasn’t such a good operative Nick would have demoted him to Paint-Dryer or Paper-Cutter or something a long time ago.

“Clint Barton, at your service, sir.” The elf’s face held an ever-so-slight grin. Clint had to know that Nick recognized him—he was just being cheeky.

“What were you doing way up there?” Nick asked.

“Analyzing the situation. I observe things better from afar.”

“Well, have you seen anything useful?”

“Everything was normal until a minute or so after I stepped out. The rig just shut down. When it restarted, though, it didn’t actually open. It doesn’t lead anywhere, or at least it won’t let anything through.” The elf plucked a candy cane from the fold of his hat, gestured for Nick to step to his left, and tossed it lazily at the tele-rig. It pinged horrifically as the candy cane ricocheted off of thin air and zoomed through the spot Nick had just been standing to the opposite end of the room. Nick heard a loud crack as it shattered on impact with the wall. Clint continued his report. “I don’t think it could be anything I did coming through, or anybody who came through before me today. I went over the in-flow records: nobody brought any foreign substances through, nobody had trouble on their last mission, nobody had been sick. We could go up to Medical and do some tests to see if someone ate radioactive candy, but honestly I don’t think this has anything to do with the people who’ve already come through.”

Nick glanced at the offending tele-rig. It was, like each other rig, a tube of crystal and copper bent to form an arch, six or seven feet tall and nearly that in width to accommodate anything they wanted to transport in. A square copper finished pad secured it to the floor and concealed the working just below floor level. Selvig had opened a hatch to get below and was bustling about in the small space while chattering away to the few folks left in the DC4 engine room, looking more intrigued than concerned. Nick could see several crystal filaments in the hatch sparking and pulsing randomly, as well as a thin layer of frost covering all the copperworks. The crystal finishing on the arch was glowing; the rig was clearly overheating, despite the considerable chill in the room.

When Nick had finished his inspection, Clint spoke again. “Whatever the problem is, I don’t think it’s anything on this side, sir.”

“On this side?”

The elf shrugged, as if his meaning was obvious. “Tele-rigs are doors to the rest of the world, right? Doors open from both sides.”

And that was when it happened.

~o~o~

Four levels above the transport room, Mrs. Claus was supervising the loading of Nick’s priceless Phase 2 project into makeshift drop-tubes that would take them safely down to the storage bay near the loading dock, when the entire level rumbled underneath her feet. The realization that every elf in the room was watching her tore her mind away from T-level and back to her own. “Is everything moved?”

“We have all the blueprints, ma’am, but we’re still working on the toys.”

“Go faster.” She turned on her hatcomm. “Phil, did you feel that?”

Phil was two levels below her, chasing the last of the elves out of Legal and down the stairs to the lower Atrium level. From the balcony he could see that most of the bulbs on the Atrium Tree had just shattered. “Yeah. I’m sending a team up to T-Level to check on them.”

~o~o~

The rumbling in the rest of the North Pole was nothing compared to the earsplitting sound that shook T-Level. The entire row of tele-rigs lit up with power and blew out one after another in a symphony of shattered crystal. Nick scuttled away from B4 as it grew brighter, catching sight of Clint hauling Selvig out of the rig’s hatch and backing away on the other side. The last working rig blew—and then B4 exploded so forcefully that Nick stumbled backwards several steps.

The lights were down, but the residual glow from millions of pieces of shattered crystal threw enough light for Nick to see a lone figure standing were tele-rig B4 used to be.

It seemed to be somewhat smaller than an elf but grew as Nick watched until he wasn’t sure what its original size could have been. Hooded and cloaked, with dark eyes and a pale pristine face, it looked similar to a human adult. That was impossible, though; it had been thousands of years since adults believed in the North Pole, and even when they had none had been audacious enough to try and break in. Besides, this figure had such an odd look to it—not human, not elf, but something else. It was holding a glowing spear.

Nick heard the patter of many pairs of elven feet and knew someone (probably Phil) had sent a team to find out what happened. He put out a hand and waved urgently for them to stand down. Raising his voice, he called out to the mysterious figure. “Sir, please put down the spear.”

For a moment, the stranger looked confused. Perhaps hijacking a North Pole tele-rig left a person disoriented. Out of the corner of his eye Nick saw the team of elves creep closer.

Then the stranger attacked. His spear wove through the air faster than sleet and more silent than snow. Nick saw it coming his way and lunged out of the way. A blast of magic—or energy, it was hot—skewered past him, catching the tail of his great red longcoat. To Nick’s horror the affected part turned black, as if splashed by ink, and within seconds the material had faded to grey and crumbled into dust, not even leaving a frayed string behind.  
Nick rolled to his feet and looked around for his elves, and for the attacker. He immediately caught sight of three elves taking cover behind the burnt out control panel of a tele-rig. He joined them.

“Sir, our tranquilizers have no effect on him.”

That’s lovely, Nick thought. How could he stop this maniac? He glanced at the frightened elves beside them. They were tough—Phil’s operatives always were—but they were outmatched. “Get yourselves out of here. And go down, not up! The upper levels aren’t stable.”

They didn’t need to be told twice. “Are you coming sir?”

“When everybody’s out.” Nick was already casting his eyes about for the other four elves. He could hear the crashes and screeches of conflict on the other side of the room and ventured closer, picking up a heavy shard of crystal on his way. Maybe the man was immune to tranqs, but nobody was immune to a thump on the skull. He soon caught sight of his target—and the rest of his elves. The stranger had them cornered, and was clearly about to vaporize them all into dust. Nick was too far away to even throw his chunk of crystal.

Magic shot from the spear—and reflected off of a cleverly aimed piece of crystal, thrown by Clint from an impossible perch halfway up the wall. The burst of deadly magic zoomed back towards its master. Caught by surprise, the man dropped to the floor, and was rewarded by eighty pounds of furious elf jumping on his back.

Deciding that Clint could handle the attacker temporarily, Nick sprinted down the length of the hall to the four other elves. “Go!” he ordered, grabbing one by the scruff of his uniform and slinging him towards the exit. Seven elves, safe. Now there was just Selvig and Clint…

Nick spun around and scanned what was left of the transport room. Much of it had taken on a gray pallor as a result of the stranger’s spear, and it was not hard to pick out Selvig’s green suit. The elf looked dazed when Nick reached him.

He wrapped his little fingers around Nick’s arm. “DC4’s completely shot. We’ve got maybe two minutes before the engine room blows apart.”

“If you don’t start running we’ve got maybe two seconds before we get blown apart.” Nick dragged the elf along with him towards the exit. As sharp cry from Clint made him stop in his tracks. He spun around, motioning Selvig to keep running. Instead he just trembled in place.

The stranger had a fist clamped around Clint’s wrist, holding him in the air and away from his body. Clint was swinging his free hand—armed with a sharp splinter of crystal—at his aggressor, but couldn’t reach him. The stranger spoke. “You have heart.”

As Nick watched, the man touched his spear to the Clint’s chest. For a second Nick was sure the elf would crumble into dust. Instead Clint shuddered slightly, and the stranger dropped him. When he got to his feet, he looked up at the stranger, and dropped his shard of crystal. Nick felt his heart sink. Whatever had happened to him, Clint might well have been better off as a puddle of dust. Nick shoved Selvig closer to the exit.

“Please don’t.” The stranger’s voice rang across the room. “I need him to run that Hourglass of yours.”

Nick turned around to face the man, arms crossed. He kept himself between Selvig and the stranger. “This doesn’t have to get any messier. You don’t want to end up on the Naughty List,” he said. 

“Of course it does. I’ve come too far for anything else.” The stranger grinned at him, looking more than a little deranged. He spoke slowly, savoring each word. “I am Loki… of the Island of Lost Toys… and I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

Selvig peeked his head out from behind Nick. “The Island of Lost Toys? Yes… Loki, brother of Thor!”

Nick recalled the mix-up a few years back with a prince from the Island of Lost toys. It helped to explain—but not excuse—the behavior of this man (this toy?): the folks there were more than a little odd.

“We have no quarrel with the Island of Lost Toys,” Nick said.

“An ant has no quarrel with a boot.” 

Nick seethed at the flippant tone. This was unbelievable. “And you’re planning to step on us? You’re asking for bad news in your stocking this year.”

“I come with glad tidings,” Loki said, with a flourish of the spear that made Nick flinch. Loki sneered at the movement. “Of a world made free.”

Nick imagined he could feel the floor rumbling slightly beneath his feet, and his thoughts jumped to the DC4 engine. How long until it blew? “Free from what?” 

“Christmas. The great lie all you all tell each other. The truth is this: there is no such thing as Christmas.” 

This one was really a nut, Nick thought. But he was a dangerous nut. “Really? Have you taken a look around you?”

Suddenly Clint, who had been standing coolly at attention beside Loki, seemed to come to life. “Sir, St. Nick is stalling. As soon as Mrs. Claus figures out something is wrong she’ll stop the Hourglass and we’ll be trapped here.”

Nick briefly cursed the foresight that made Phil pick such intelligent agents. He didn’t have a moment to come up with a new plan; at a nod from Loki, Clint drew his tranq gun out of its holster and fired at him. Nick tried to dodge, but knew it was futile—Clint’s marksmanship skills were legendary—and felt the dart pierce his shoulder and fall out. The world started to spin.

“Sweet dreams, Santa Claus.”

Nick wasn’t sure when his knees hit the ground, but he was definitely on the floor by the time he caught sight of Loki giving Selvig the same treatment he’d given Clint.


	2. There Arose Such a Clatter

The Phase 2 toys were all removed to the storage bay, and Maria scurried down to the Atrium from the upper DC4 levels. Originally, the Atrium had been all there was of Santa’s Workshop, back when it still sat on the ground: a huge squat tower made of hundreds of workrooms and one big circular room in the center, with the gleaming, sixty-foot live Christmas tree in the middle and Santa’s personal workshop suspended above it. That was where she was heading now, to turn over the Hourglass once more and buy them all a little time to deal with this crisis. Midnight was creeping closer, and even with the auxiliary support St. Nick received from strategically placed elf teams all over the globe, it still took many hours to deliver all the presents. They didn’t have time for emergencies like this, and they could only turn the Hourglass over so many times before time and space started to deteriorate. The Hourglass was one of the most powerful objects in the world, but even it had limits. She hoped Nick and the others sorted out the problem on T-Level before they lost an engine or something.

To Maria’s relief, she saw Selvig and Phil’s top recon officer, Clint, coming down the stairs double-time. Nick was not with them. Instead, a stranger, carrying a glowing staff, strode purposefully behind them.

Clint walked past her and headed onto the walkway leading to Santa’s suspended workshop. “We need to see the Hourglass, now.”

He didn’t stop for a reply, and Maria hurried to follow him, Selvig and stranger crowding onto the walkway after her. She glanced again at the stranger. “Who’s that?” she asked Clint.

“He didn’t tell me.” Clint stopped with his hand on the door.

Maria’s mind raced. What was going on?

Suddenly her hatcomm buzzed impatiently and Maria switched it on, an act of habit. It was Nick, voice a dissonant mixture of groggy and urgent. “Maria! Are you there? They’re after the Hourglass. Clint’s turned.”

The first thing Maria realized was that the sound on her hatcomm was loud enough to be heard by the others. The second was that Clint was drawing his tranq gun. She did the only thing she could do in the middle of a walkway over a sixty foot drop—she jumped off.

Grabbing the railing tightly with one hand, she swung over the edge and reached for the protruding rim of with walkway. As her arm extended and forced her to change direction, Maria could feel the blood rushing to her head. Don’t let go now, she told herself. She could hear Clint firing at her but in another instant she had completed her cartwheeling swing and grabbed onto a suspension bar on the underside of the walkway with her freed hand. She let go of the railing and grabbed the bar with her other hand as well, putting herself safely underneath the walkway—well, as safe as she could be dangling sixty feet in the air with crazy elf trying to kill her. Maria had no doubt that Clint could swing under the walkway and come after her if he wanted to. A shot of tranq in her position would not be a temporary sleep but a permanent one.

Clint apparently didn’t consider her a threat, though, because a moment later, she heard the door to Nick’s workshop open and close. They were going to get the Hourglass. Maria wondered if she should try and climb back onto the walkway from here or monkey-bar it to the nearest balcony and come back up the stairs. She didn’t have the time for the safer option. Cautiously letting go with one hand, she reached for the rim of the walkway.

The entire Atrium shook with such a force that there was no doubt in Maria’s mind that DC4 had just blown completely. She nearly lost her grasp on the walkway bars, but caught herself at the last moment. The walkway trembled as all the levels underneath DC4 began collapsing. There wasn’t much time; if the damage was big enough it could crush the Atrium. Maria tried for the side of the walkway again. She managed to get an arm around one of the railing supports and had one leg nearly over the side when a crashing sound drew her attention to the workshop. Something had just blown a hole in the floor; the debris fell several feet and landed on the branches of the Atrium Tree just below.

Maria watched as the stranger’s staff peeked out of the hole and fired a pulse of magic at the Tree’s branches. The instant it touched them, they melted, just collapsed into a trail of black, shiny sludge that spiraled around and around the Tree all the way to the bottom. Immediately, Clint jumped out of the hole and into the sludge, sliding down the tree at an insane speed. Selvig followed suit, holding the Hourglass close to his chest like a teddy bear—the most precious, dangerous teddy bear in the world. Then the stranger followed suit, and Maria shook off her fascination long enough to remember she was supposed to be catching them.

She hauled herself the rest of the way onto the platform just as the stranger hurled a blast of magic at her. It hit the walkway, and Maria scuttled backwards, away from the rapidly crumbling surface. The gap grew at least seven feet before stopping, separating her from the workshop. Maria realized leapt off the walkway and back onto the balcony rimming the Atrium. She hurtled down the staircase. The stranger’s group had already landed safely at the bottom of the Atrium, but that didn’t mean Maria was giving up.

~o~o~

Phil could appreciate people who were devoted to their jobs, he really could. After all, he was one of them himself—but insisting on bringing equipment along when the Head Elf had just announced that the entire DC4 wing was collapsing was a little much. Phil giving orders left and right, ordering elves to drop everything and head to the loading level, or the other DC wings, or even the Atrium. His hat was buzzing like an alarm clock with voices giving reporting in from everywhere.

One voice was distinct, however—St. Nick’s. Phil switched off the other channels immediately, focusing on St. Nick’s.

“Phil! I’m on level 2 and the place is falling down around me. Can you get a drop-tube working?”

Phil glanced upwards at the trembling ceiling. No drop-tube would make it up there. But Phil had something better… “No. Can you make it to a window, sir?”

“There’s one in the Painting Room, if it hasn’t collapsed. I’ll see you there.”

Phil grabbed the nearest elf and put him in charge of clearing the rest of the level. Then he sprinted down to the storage bays, pushing people other out of his way when necessary. He zoomed through the huge room, stockpiled with finished and unfinished toys and other supplies, scanning the labels on each aisle.

“Come on. Prototypes… pre-paint… rolling toys… reindeer parts… recall!” Phil sped down the recall aisle and found what he was looking for: an Acme Sonic Boomerang. Much too dangerous for children, but exactly what he needed right now. He tucked it in his belt. Now he needed a Reindeer…

Just over a minute later Phil had appropriated a Reindeer 2001 model from the prototype aisle and was zooming towards the nearest window. The North Pole had stopped using real reindeer for flying decades ago; Phil’s ride was a mechanical version developed from an old Grinch design that never needed to eat, or sleep—and could go very, very fast. Phil was counting on that.

Once he had a straight shot at the window, Phil threw the boomerang. The sonic boom rippled around him, knocking things off of shelves and shattering the window just in time for him to speed through it. He made sure to grab the boomerang again as he flew through the cold Arctic air, eyes darting over the outer structure of the North Pole, looking for the Painting Room window.

“Sir, have you found the window?”

“Yes.”

“You may want to stand back.”

“I don’t have the room the stand back in. The level is crumbling. You won’t be able to land in here. I’ll have to jump.”

“Roger that.”

Phil spotted the correct window—it was the highest one still intact—and threw the boomerang. The moonlight lit the window up like a photographic flash, and illuminated the entire facing side of the North Pole as it crumbled. Phil gaped momentarily at the sight of the huge structure submitting to gravity. The rumbling was so loud he couldn’t even hear the crash of the window shattering. Phil directed the Reindeer 2001 straight into the thick of the falling glass, looking for a figure in the red coat.

He spotted St. Nick and strove to catch him, careering the Reindeer to his left. For a moment it looked like they would miss each other, but then St. Nick caught hold of the Reindeer. Phil nearly fell off the machine himself as the man’s weight collided with it. Nick straightened himself immediately and gave Phil a nod, looking far too calm for a man who had just jumped out of an exploding window without knowing whether anything would be there to catch him.

Nick held out the boomerang. “This yours?”

Suddenly Hill’s voice cut in on both their hatcomms. “They’re headed to the launch pad. They have the Hourglass!”

“The sleigh,” Nick said. “Get us down there, quick.”

Phil drove the Reindeer downwards, steering slightly hampered by the increased weight. As they cleared the bottom of the North Pole, Phil saw Santa’s sleigh slide off the launch pad and into the air. They were too late.

Behind him, St. Nick drew back his arm and threw the boomerang at the departing sleigh. It took the thieves by surprise, but the sleigh was built far too sturdily to be upset by the blow. It was Santa’s sleigh, after all. The elves had taken great care to make it unsinkable.

The Reindeer 2001 they were riding was not unsinkable, however, and Phil had to pull it in a dangerous curve to avoid the blasts of magic coming at them from the sleigh. He pulled up, trying to get even with the launch pad, and just managed to do so when a blast hit the underside of the reindeer.

Phil lost his grip on the reindeer as it careened out of control, dissolving underneath him. He tumbled to the deck of the launch pad. By the time he could tell again which way was up and which way was down, the sleigh and its occupants—including the Hourglass—was just a tiny speck in the distance. He looked around for St. Nick and saw him clambering to his feet a good space away.

“Sir, are you alright?”

Nick nodded, turning on his hatcomm. Phil tried to do the same but realized he’d lost his hat, so he got to feet and approached St. Nick. The man obligingly turned up the volume on his hatcomm as Phil got close. “Nick to Maria. They have the Hourglass. Do you copy?”

“Yes sir. I’m in Atrium. The structure is mostly intact but I don’t think anything’s left on the upper levels. At least none of the levels that were under DC4.”

Phil shuddered at the thought of all the repairs they would have to do. The North Pole could fly with three engines but it was a touchy process. And all on Christmas Eve! 

St. Nick continued. “I’m on the launch pad. We have men down. You?”

“A lot of folks still trapped. Don’t know how many survivors.”

“Sound the general call. I want every living soul not working rescue or repair looking for that sleigh.”

There was a pause from Maria, and Phil knew why. They didn’t have the sleigh. Without the Hourglass, Christmas Eve would be over be they could blink and they didn’t even have a way to deliver the thousands of presents waiting just inside the loading bay. “Roger that.” Maria said finally.

If St. Nick noticed the pause he didn’t show it. “And Maria? If it’s not vital leave it broken. We don’t have the time.” The man turned off his hatcomm. “Phil, get your people together. This is a Level Seven. As of right now, we have less than an hour until Christmas Day.”

Level Seven was the highest emergency rating, for catastrophes that threatened the very existence of Christmas itself. It wasn’t an exaggeration; if they didn’t get the Hourglass back, not only would this Christmas be ruined, but every Christmas after that—and that was assuming the thieves didn’t actively do anything terrible with the Hourglass itself, which was unlikely to say the least. “What do we do?” he asked.

“Do you remember the Angel’s Initiative?”

Phil nodded. “The World Holiday Council shut it down.”

“Well I’m about to reinstate it.”


	3. Now Dash Away! Dash Away! Dash Away All!

Annie forced herself not to flinch as the casually thrown dart punctured the board just shy of her left cheek. It wouldn’t do to give herself away to the boy now. He was giving her everything she needed to put him and his two buddies on the Naughty List for good. Still, hanging across an ancient, dirty dart board by one arm in the disgustingly disorganized room of a preteen boy was getting old very fast. Was that pizza on the floor over there, or a Grow Your Own Swamp kit?

Not mention that if the moron actually managed to hit her with one of those darts she’d be in big trouble.

The boy, Paul Johansen, was lounging halfway in his bed and halfway on his computer chair in the gangly way that only children going through growth spurts can manage. He was engrossed by his computer screen, and was wearing her Santa hat. That last part was very distressing. There was no way to tell when the kid had last washed his hair and when Annie was finished here, she didn’t want her hat to look like the rest of the room did.

A bubbling tinkle sound from the computer drew her attention. Paul was finally getting that video call she’d been waiting for. She just needed the names of both his friends, and the location where they’d hidden the toys they’d stolen, and then she was out of here.

Paul answered the call; Annie strained to see the usernames on the chat screen. It was a tall bet that the kids were using their own names, but it was worth a try. She was focused so completely on the computer screen that the next dart Paul threw took her by surprise. It stuck in the board just by her thigh, catching the tiniest fold of lace from her dress. Oh boy, if it had ripped, that kid was so going to pay.

Paul had the volume on his computer turned up loud enough for Annie to hear his friend speaking. “Dude what’s with the hat?”

“Got it off a doll my sister found.” He shifted the laptop screen so that Annie and the dart board showed up on the screen; she took extra care to be still. “Just fooling around.”

“And you put it on? Damn, Paul, next thing you know, you’ll be telling us you believe in Christmas again.”

“Oh, get over yourself. Christmas is for babies.”

Annie grinned inwardly. Her hatcomm was recording the whole conversation. Annie had more than enough proof to put him on the Naughty List—and his friend, too, if she could just get his name… 

“So what are you doing?” asked Paul’s frustratingly nameless friend.

Paul held up a dart. “I told you, target practice. You want to come over?”

“Dude, it’s Christmas Eve. I have to have dinner with my folks. They’ll never let me out.”

“Just say you’re going to the bathroom. I’ll call Marco. We’ve got to figure out what to do with all that crap we stole from the toy store.”

Marco. That must be the other boy. She still needed this one’s name, though.

“I’m telling you I can’t, man… Nail the doll good for me, huh?”

To Annie’s dismay, Paul’s friend disconnected. Paul huffed, exhibiting the same frustration Annie was feeling herself, and picked up a dart. He wound his arm back, getting ready for a good, heavy throw.

Suddenly the boy’s phone rang. Like a good modern child he dropped everything to answer it, although he seemed a bit confused to see it was a call rather than a text. “Who is this?” he asked.

Annie could just barely catch the familiar voice on the line. “You’re name is Paul Johansen. You live at 114 Solensky Lane, in the second bedroom on the third floor. The last letter you wrote to Santa was three years ago for a Halo 3 video game expansion pack. Put the doll on the phone or you will never receive another Christmas present again.”

Paul’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He looked at Annie. Gingerly, he set the phone on the floor and pressed the speaker button. “You’re crazy, man. It’s on speaker, but dolls can’t talk.”

Phil’s voice sounded loud and clear in the room. “We need you to come in.”

Annie could not believe he was deliberately blowing her cover like this. “Are you kidding? I’m working.”

“This takes precedence.”

“I’m in the middle of an interrogation. This moron is giving me everything.”

Paul’s mouth dangled open, lips trembling. “D-dolls can’t talk!”

Annie gave him the look, the one that said, “Really, moron?” Then she returned her attention to Phil. “Look, you can’t pull me out of this right now.”

Phil’s voice was tight. “Annie, Clint’s been compromised.”

Every other strategy and concern vanished from her mind. Define compromised. Was he injured? Missing in action? What was going on? “Let me put you on hold.”

With her free arm, she pointed at Paul. “You.” The boy jerked slightly, as if she’d skewered him with her tiny cloth finger. “Have really bad aim. I don’t.” 

With an effortless, acrobatic swing, Annie ripped a dart out of the board with her feet and sent it hurtling through the air.

~o~o~

Phil waited for Annie to finish her business with the Johansen child, assured from the crashing sounds and squeals of fright that his agent was doing fine. She wouldn’t hurt the child, that wasn’t allowed, but she would definitely put the fear of the Naughty List in him. Annie was his best undercover operative, because unlike all the others, she was an old toy, not an elf. As a Raggedy Ann doll she could get closer to children than any elf. Of course, she hadn’t always used that talent for good, like she did now: sniffing out rotten apples on the Nice List. There was a reason she was known to toy collectors around the world as Haunted Annie.

The noises halted, and Annie spoke. “Switching to my hatcomm.”

Phil obligingly turned off the phone he was using, and turned on his own hatcomm, handing the phone to a nearby elf who would return the human technology to inventory department.

~o~o~

Annie tugged her hat off of Paul’s head, relieved to find that his hair wasn’t too greasy, and turned on her hatcomm. Paul himself was asleep, put down with a tranq gun and very likely to be far nicer to toys of all kinds once he woke up—but especially to dolls.

“I hope that kid isn’t on the Nice List,” said Phil over the hatcomm.

“No, definitely Naughty.” Annie walked across Paul’s desk, unlocked the window, and pushed it open. “Where’s Clint now?”

“We don’t know.”

“But he’s alive?” He had better be alive. Please let him be alive.

“We think so. I’ll brief you on everything when you get back. But first, we need you to talk to the big guy.”

Annie huffed. Ever since the Grinch stole Christmas several years back she’d had way more contact with the cocky green toy-maker than anybody needed. “Phil, you know that the Grinch trusts me about as far as he can throw me.” She prepared to jump off the window sill.

“Oh, I’ve got the Grinch. You get the big guy.”

Annie stopped, with her hand on the windowpane. “Oh, boy…” 

Paul’s home was up north, and it was cold outside. Ice clung to every object, and the wind blew sharply. As it bit at Annie’s cheeks, a fragment of song wandered through her head. Jack Frooost nipping at your noooose…

Jack Frost could do a lot more than nip, these days.

~o~o~

Far south, just past the equator, it was midsummer, and a scorching one at that. Sweat ran down every neck and sand that shone like the sun and was just as hot climbed into every shoe to search for a bit of shade. No one who could afford to went outside during the midday heat, but plenty of people couldn’t afford not to. The noise of the market place, of wheels grinding in the sand and voices wheedling for bargains seemed to echo off the heat like it was some invisible surface. In one corner of the city, the sounds of children talking and laughing was particularly prominent. 

The children were half clothed at most, an many didn’t have shoes for the sand to get into at all, but the man selling them ice cream from a dilapidated metal pushcart didn’t ask for money if they didn’t have it. The children crowded around the cart, pressing their faces against its cool surface. Suddenly they erupted into noise like a gaggle of surprised geese.

“Hey, don’t push. You got to get in line!”

“Ice cream man!” A small girl shoved her way to the very front of the cart. She was barely tall enough to look over the top of it. “Ice cream man! I need ice. My brother, he is working always in the hot sand and he fell down and his skin is so hot—he doesn’t get up. He doesn’t get up…”

The ice cream man leaned over his cart and looked down at the girl. He was not a local; he had a westerner’s face, even though it was brown from the sun. He wore glasses and although he spoke the language he had an odd accent. Maybe not a westerner’s accent, but an accent, nonetheless. “Slow down. Your brother has heatstroke?”

The girl held out a fistful of money. “Ice. Please.”

He pushed her hand down gently as he came around the side of the cart. “You don’t need that.”

He followed the little girl as she led him through the tangled streets of the city. He tried not to walk close by anyone, but in the crowded alleys and markets it was impossible to do so. He caught many people give him a second look after feeling a sudden brush of cold. He wondered if anyone recognized him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of red and white—a Santa hat—and he leaned forward to grab the little girl’s skinny wrist and pull her to behind the nearest merchant’s cart. When she complained, he hushed her quickly. Then he peeked around the cart.

It was only a group of Americans, handing out Grinch merchandise, foodstuffs and other supplies. One was wearing a Santa hat, but he was definitely just a normal adult. He sighed. “Getting kind of jumpy, Frost…” he muttered.

He continued to follow the girl to edge of city. A small hut came into view and the girl broke into a run. He picked up his paced and entered the hut just in time to see her disappear out a back window.

He sighed again. “Should brought the cart along.” Now it would be gone, he knew. He’d had this trick played on him before. The cart was worth few dollars and people needed money badly around here.

“You know, for a man who’s supposed to be avoiding stress you picked quite a place to settle.”

Frost stiffened at the voice, and whirled around. A doll sat on the hut’s rickety wooden table, watching him. That was not so strange; toys often talked to him, as if they somehow collectively knew he was in on their secret. What made him flinch was the Santa hat she was wearing.

“Avoiding stress is not the secret,” he said, glad to talk. Talking was much better than his other alternative.

The doll tipped her head. “Then what is it? The heat?”

Frost shook his head. People always wanted to know, didn’t they? It was not the heat. The heat may have helped, but it was not the heat. He became aware he was wringing his hands nervously, but couldn’t bring himself to stop. “You brought me to the edge of the city. Smart. I assume the whole place is surrounded?”

A shake of the head. The doll spoke softly, treating him with kid gloves. “Just you and me.”

“And your actress buddy? She going to land on the Naughty List for that lie? Or do you care?”

“She’ll be fine. Everyone has transgressions to make up for.” The doll looked from the window, where the girl had disappeared, to him. “She does, I do, you do.”

Oh, lovely. Conversations rarely ended well after people started talking about his transgressions. “And who are you?”

“Annie Mattel.”

Frost sucked in a breath. Might as well get to the point. “Are you here to kill me, Miss Mattel? Because that’s not going to work out for everyone.”

“Oh no, of course not. I’m here on behalf of the North Pole.”

Frost couldn’t help but snicker—the two didn’t necessarily contradict each other, but he didn’t say so. “I know. The hat tends to be a give-away, you know,” he said drily. “How’d they find me?”

“We never lost you, Frost. We’ve kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent.”

“Why?”

Miss Mattel shrugged. “St. Nick seems to trust you.” She paused, and then her tone became more business-like. “But now we need you to come in.”

So they wanted to drag him back into the fray. Why couldn’t people understand how bad an idea that was? “What if I say no?”

The doll huffed a little, getting impatient. “I’ll persuade you.”

“And what if… the Other Guy says no?”

“Mr. Frost, you’ve been more than a year without an incident. I don’t think you want to break that streak.”

Now he was getting impatient. “Well I don’t every time get what I want.”

“We’re facing a potential global catastrophe, here.”

“Ha. Now those I actively try to avoid.”

Miss Mattel pulled a slip of rolled paper out of her hat and spread it out on the table. Frost leaned in to look at it despite his resolution not to get involved. “This is the Hourglass,” she said. “It has the power to stop time for whole the planet. Or turn it backwards, or anything else you can think of.”

“I know what it is.” He’d heard, through the grapevine, that the North Pole had fished this out of the Bermuda Triangle after his accident there. The Hourglass was the reason for the Other Guy. “What does Nick want me to do? Swallow it?”

“He wants you to find it. It’s been taken. It emits weather disruptions too weak for us to trace.”

“Yeah, I know that too.” The Bermuda Triangle was famous for a reason. Did she realize she was giving him redundant information? Was she trying to push him? See where he would lose control?

“There’s no one that knows atmospherology like you do. If there was, that’s where I’d be.” 

It was plausible, Frost thought. “So Nick isn’t after the magic. Doesn’t want me to fix global warming or give Florida a white Christmas.”

“Not that he’s told me.”

Frost raised an eyebrow. “And he tells you everything?”

The doll lifted an eyebrow right back at him and avoided ether question. “Talk to St. Nick. He needs you on this.” She was pushing him, he knew it.

“He needs me in a cage?”

“No one’s going to put you in a cage.”

Frost slammed his fists down on the weak-legged table hard enough to shake the doll off of her feet. “Stop lying to me!” he growled, raising his voice for the first time in a long, long time.

The doll’s eyes widened, panicking, but her reflexes were impressive enough that she had her tranq gun out and trained on him within seconds. Frost took his weight back off the table and backed off.

“I’m sorry. That was mean. I just wanted to see what you’d do. You don’t really have to worry unless you start seeing ice, you know.” Ice in great, sharp dangerous spikes, growing off of every surface. He shook the image out of his head, and noticed that the doll remained on alert.   
Great. That’s where bright ideas got him. If he’d spooked her too much and she actually shot him here would be a heck of a mess to cleanup, even in the dry, hot climate. He put his hands up. “Why don’t we do this the easy way… where you don’t use that, and the Other Guy doesn’t make a mess? Okay? Annie?”

After a moment, the doll put away her gun. Speaking into the fluffy ball of white fur on her hat, she said: “Stand down. We’re good here.”

Rustling noises from outside told Frost that the hut was indeed, surrounded. He smirked at her. “Just you and me, huh?”

~o~o~

St. Nick did not like the World Holiday Council. Whatever the agreements and concessions that had been made by previous Santa’s decreed, Nick didn’t think that some outside entity should be telling him how to run Christmas. He hadn’t known about them when he accepted the job, and now that he did know them he didn’t like them any more. The feeling, he knew, was mutual.

“This is out of line, Nick,” said one councilman on the video screen in Nick’s surprisingly still intact workshop. “You’re dealing with forces you can’t control.”

Nick scowled. “You ever been in a war, Councilman? In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?” Nick had been in wars, before and after becoming Santa Claus, and he was positive that none of these self-preserving shadows had.

“You’re saying that the Island of Lost Toys is declaring war on our planet?”

“No, not Toyland. Loki.”

“He can’t be working alone. What about the other one? His brother?”

Nick shook his head, willing himself to remain calm despite his awareness of the clock ticking away, a clock that he no longer had control of. “Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile. But the Island of Lost Toys is worlds away. We can’t depend on him to help. It’s up to us.”

“Which is why you should be focusing on Phase 2. It was designed purposefully to combat catastrophes like—”

“Phase 2 isn’t ready. Our enemy is.” Nick interrupted. “It’s Christmas Eve, people. I have thousands of presents to deliver and someone has stolen the most powerful artifact in the world. We need a response team.”

“The Angels Initiative was shut down.”

“This is not about the Angels.”

“Do you think you’re still some swashbuckling privateer and you can do whatever you please just because you have a flying ship and some fancy gadgets? You are not leaving the fate of Christmas in the hands of a bunch of freaks.”

St. Nick’s voice rose a level despite his efforts to the contrary. “I’m not leaving anything to anyone. We need a response team. These people may be isolated—unbalanced even—but I believe with the right push, they can be exactly what we need.”

“You believe? The world has never been saved by sentiment, Santa Claus.”

“No,” Nick said, voice grim. “It’s saved by heroes.”


	4. A Long Winter's Nap

Rudy was flying as fast as he could through the thick Canadian forest, dodging tree trunks and branches by a hair’s breath. It was the middle of the night, and ostensibly he was practicing his close-quarters flying. Occasionally he’d take aim at a tree and give his antlers a work out. He pushed himself faster, trees rushing by so fast he could barely dodge them—

He narrowly missed the steeple of the little French church, dodging blasts from Krampus’s devastating weapons. One hit the steeple; it dissolved. A close blast forced him to roll over in mid-air, the elf on his back barely able to stay on…

“There’s not enough time!”

The words echoed in his head as Rudy wove threw a group of pines, contrasting with the silence of the snow-white wilderness around him. He flew too closely to one tree and felt its needles graze his cheek—

“You won’t be alone,” said a beautiful elf-girl, her warm hand on his cheek. Rudy smile at her, but suddenly her hand began to dissolve. Panicked, his eyes darted to her face, but to Rudy’s horror she had suddenly turned into Krampus. He was clutching the Hourglass, shouting maniacally as he dissolved into nothing…

Distracted, Rudy knocked a tree branch with his antlers and it creaked loudly as it disengaged from the tree and fell—

The Hourglass tumbled out of the airship, falling towards the roiling sea…

“I got to put her in the water.”

Suddenly Rudy felt his head connect squarely with the trunk of a large tree. Had it been a sapling, his strength could have snapped it in half, but this tree was old and grumpy and just shuddered, dumping a load of snow from its branches. Between the thunk on his head and the sudden weight of snow pressing down on him, Rudy tumbled to the ground. the cold snow pressed in on him, white and suffocating. Rudy thrashed around, struggling to get his paws back underneath him.

“Oh my god, he’s still alive!”

Finally, after what was probably ten seconds but felt much longer, Rudy popped out of the snow, standing once again on all four legs. He breathed in the cold winter air.

“Trouble sleeping?” 

Rudy whirled around. St. Nick was just a few feet away, hovering on of the new-fangled flying machines the North Pole used.

Rudy sighed, shaking the snow off of his coat. “I slept for seventy years sir. I think I’ve had my fill.”

“Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world.” Nick gestured with one arm, as if just past the tree line there was a city gleaming with interesting amusements. There probably was; cities seemed everywhere these days. “I hear Blitzen’s grandkids can’t get enough of you.”

Rudy would have rather talked to Blitzen, not his exuberant grandchildren. It had been seventy years though, and none of Rudy’s friends—no one he knew—was still around. Rudy glanced at Nick; he was apparently waiting for an answer.

“I went under, the world was at war. We were going to lose Christmas. I wake up, they say we won. They didn’t say what we lost.” Rudy gave a pointed look to the man’s flying contraption.

“It’s true we don’t use reindeers to fly anymore. There are other jobs if you want them, you know.”

Rudy didn’t feel like having this conversation again. “Shouldn’t you be delivering presents, sir?”

“I should. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“Trying to get me back in the spirit of Christmas?”

Fury’s tone darkened. “Trying to save it.” The man pulled a slip of paper from the pocket of his red long coat. It rolled open to reveal a familiar image.

“Krampus’s secret weapon.”

Nick nodded, re-stowing the piece of paper within his coat. “Howard Grinch fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. We’ve been using it to deliver presents to more children than ever before. A lot has changed, like you said. Kids need toys more than anything right now.”

Rudy thought about saying that Christmas hadn’t always been about the toys, but it wasn’t his place to question how this Santa did his job. “Who took it from you?”

“He’s called Loki. He’s …not from around here. There’s a lot we’ll have to bring you up to speed on if you’re in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”

Rudy thought of the sights he’d seen since waking up, both in the human world and the worlds that lay hidden just out of sight. “At this point I doubt anything would surprise me.”

“A weekend with Blitzen’s grandkids if I prove you wrong.”

“Really?”

“Do you know how many letters I’ve gotten asking to meet Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? And not just from them. Every worker I have with parents old enough to remember you wants an introduction.”

Embarrassed, Rudy used a hoof to joggle a stuck twig out of his antler, and stepped away from the tree, preparing to take off. St Nick continued, tone serious once more.

“I’ll expect you at the Pole in twenty minutes. Is there anything you can tell us about the Hourglass that we ought to know now?”

Rudy snorted, and took off. “You should have left it in the ocean.”

~o~o~

Jack Frost peered at the ocean of sand around him as he paid the driver with everything he had on him. It wasn’t that much, since he’d had very little occasion to use human money if the first place, but it was more than the man expected. He looked at Frost curiously from the front seat of his busted jeep.

“You trying to die out here, Mister? There is no town or water for seventy miles any direction. The sun will come up soon, you know. It’ll be damn hot.”

“I know.”

The man stared at him for a second longer, and then pocketed the money. As he drove off Frost heard him muttering to himself about crazy foreigners.

Frost was half a mind to run after him. What was he doing out here? This was stupid. He should’ve taken the ride with the Mattel woman.

Calm down, he told himself. This is not helping.

Frost took a deep breath. If he was going to back to civilization he needed to know if he could handle this. It was only a little flight, just manipulating the wind. That was all. No snow, no ice. He was in control.

He felt the air shift above him, great block of it as high as the stratosphere. A small thrill went through him. It had been so long since he flew, since he made it snow… It wasn’t fair.

No, stay focused. Just some wind.

By the time his feet left the ground Frost knew he was kidding himself. His last thought before losing control completely was that he hoped he didn’t run into any airliners on the way to the North Pole.

~o~o~

The night watchman of control tower B for the Con Edison power grid was asleep on the job. Tony couldn’t blame him; it was Christmas Eve and the poor sucker was stuck watching machine whirrs all night. It made it easier to walk into the control room and install a specially made microchip into one of the server bays, though. Tony was almost done when his whistling woke up the watchman, who shortly afterward stumbled into the room groggily.

“Uh, you can’t be in here.” 

Tony turned half around and gave the man a cheeky wave. The shock was enough to wake up the man completely. “You’re the Grinch!”

Tony returned to his work. “A regular Sherlock Holmes, you are.”

“What are you doing here?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s Christmas Eve, I’m the Grinch. I steal things, notably Christmas presents, stockings and trees—but not Christmas hams, I’m not sure how that got into the story… Tonight, though, I’m branching out.”

The watchman struggled to keep up with Tony’s rambling. Very few people could. “You’re stealing power? Doesn’t Grinch Tower have its own generators?”

“Yes, it does. But so does very other building around it. That’s what I’m trying to fix.”

The man frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to. I’m the genius here.” Tony finished, picked up the metal suitcase that held his ride and bid adieu to the watchmen. “I’m off. Places to go, stockings to steal…”

The watchman seemed to finally remember his job. “Stop! You can’t just come in here and mess with the city power grid.”

Tony couldn’t help but grin. There were a few things Tony Grinch couldn’t do, he was willing to admit. Not many, but some. Hacking the Con Edison was not one of them. Wrapping people around his finger wasn’t either. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gift cards for Grinch merchandise he’d been handing out at a recent press conference. They were for perhaps five hundred dollars each. Tony took the man’s hand and folded all of them into it, ending with a business card. “If you get fired, call my secretary Cindy. Here’s your Christmas bonus. Remember, every toy you buy sends supplies to kids in Gulmira.”

Bribe completed, Tony turned once more to leave. The watchman grabbed his arm.

“Wait, I gotta ask. Why is your skin green? Really?”

Tony huffed, pulled out his cellphone and swiped the screen to reveal an app he’d designed himself. It was named, imaginatively, The Green Question Total, and displayed a number. He thumbed the screen. The number went up by one. “You are the 4,687 person to ask me that question. There are two answers: one on Grinch Toys website and one on public file with the Ravenswood Psychiatric Institute. I’ll let you choose which one to believe. Good night.”

Once outside, Tony set down the case and kicked it—within a minute and a half his flying suit had put itself together around him. He frowned; he really ought to get assembly time down to under a minute. Then he took off, zooming between New York skyscrapers towards Grinch Tower. He opened a call to Cindy. “Good to go on this end. The rest is up to you.”

Cindy’s face appeared on his HUD; her eyes were darting over the computer screen. “You hacked the grid? We’re in control of the entire block?”

Tony grinned smugly. “Grinch Tower is about to become a beacon of Christmas spirit. Light her up.”

An instant later Tony turned a corner and Grinch Tower came into sight. As he approached, all of the exterior lights and Christmas displays on any structure within a block of the tower shut down. Grinch Tower itself was lit up brilliantly, all eighty four floors of it, in a moving, multicolor display (although the color green did feature prominently). At the top, twenty foot letters spelled out “Grinch.”

“How does it look?” Cindy asked.

“Like Christmas. But with more… me.”

“Okay, the prank went well. Now we’ve got to get ready for the giveaway tomorrow. You need to do some press, get on Twitter, start talking it up. I have to get clearance for the next supply liner in DC tomorrow.”

“Cindy, you’re killing me. The moment, remember? Enjoy the moment.”

“Then get in here and I will.”

Tony flew up to the topmost floor where his personal landing pad awaited and allowed the automated mechanisms to disassemble his suit.

“Sir, Head Elf Phil of the North Pole is on the line,” his AI informed him.

“I’m not in.” He gestured at the night sky around him. “I’m actually out.”

There was the faintest hint of an eye-roll in the AI’s tone as it replied: “Sir, I’m afraid he’s insisting.”

“Grow a spine, Max. I got date.”

Tony grinned at Cindy as he entered the penthouse, but she was glued to her computer screen. “Here come the complaints: the mayor’s office, Macy’s, the Disney Store, Gimbals, Saks Fifth… Everyone is ticked off.”

“Of course they are. I was directly involved.” Tony swiped at the screens from behind and they disappeared. “Tell me, how does it feel to be a genius?”

Cindy leaned over the counter dividing them until her nose almost bumped his, smirking. “Well, I wouldn’t know, now would I?”

“What do you mean? What better way to celebrate the opening of Grinch Tower than to steal the spotlight from every other building on the block?” Tony gestured out the window at the darkened street. “All this came from you.”

“No, all this came from that.” She tapped his temple sharply.

“Give yourself some credit, please. Grinch Tower is your baby. Give yourself …twelve percent of the credit.”

Cindy’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “Twelve percent?”

“And argument can be made for fifteen.”

Cindy rolled her eyes and strode over to the bar a pulled down two glasses. “Twelve percent of my baby?”

“Well I did do all the heavy lifting. Literally, I lifted the heavy things. Plus I designed the light show, just in case you didn’t notice all the…” He accepted the glass she handed him and was about to drink when he noticed the color. “…green. What is this?”

“Eggnog and vodka.” Cindy sipped hers—which had a proper eggnog color—innocently.

“But it’s green!”

“I thought you liked the color green.”

She was teasing him, he knew, but sometimes Tony did wish he could get away from the color green. “Not in my food! Is this for that comment about percentages?”

“No, I’m just pranking you.”

The problem with Cindy was that she enjoyed mischief almost as much as he did—or maybe that was what he loved about her… “So I’m still going to pay for it in some subtle way later, aren’t I?”

“It’s not going to be that subtle.”

“Tell you what. The next building is going to say ‘Cindy Lou Who’ on the top.” He held out his glass for a toast.

She tapped it with her own. “On the lease.”

Max interrupted their celebrations. “Sir, the telephone. I’m afraid my protocols have been bypassed.”

Tony turned back to the counter and picked up his phone. The elf began speaking immediately. “Mr. Grinch, we need to talk.”

Tony put on a blank face and replied: “You have reached the life-model decoy of the Grinch. Please leave a message.”

“This is urgent.”

“Then leave it urgently.”

A sudden whirring sound drew Tony’s attention to the landing pad; the elf had just landed there on a Reindeer 2001. Tony was torn between ordering Max to nudge it off the roof and wanting to study it.

Cindy grinned widely. “Phil! Come in.”

Tony felt his face flush and knew he was turning an even darker shade of green. “Phil?”

The elf shut down the reindeer and it plopped softly to the ground. “I can’t stay.”

Tony followed Cindy to the door. “Uh, his first name is Elf.”

Cindy ignored him. “Come on in. We’re celebrating.”

“Which is why he can’t stay,” Tony grumbled.

Phil held out a flash drive. “We need you to look this over right now.”

“I don’t like to be handed things.”

“That’s fine, because I love to be handed things.” Cindy said. “So let’s trade.” She gave him her eggnog, and took the flash drive. Then she took Tony’s eggnog and handed him the flash drive. Tony eyed it with distaste. It wasn’t much of an improvement on green eggnog.

“There bitcoins on this? Nick’s newest offer?” he asked. “Listen, Phil, I like you. I’m even—can’t believe I’m actually using the word—grateful you helped get me out of Ravenswood. But I still hate your boss, and I’m still not making any drones for him.”

“This isn’t a business offer.”

That caught Tony attention, though he didn’t want to admit it. It caught Cindy’s too. “Is this about the Christmas Angels thing?”—at a look from Phil she quickly corrected herself—“Which I know nothing about.” Cindy, being a human adult, was not strictly supposed to know about anything that went on in the North Pole.

“The Angel’s Initiative was scrapped.” Tony handed back the flash drive. The elf refused to take it. “And I thought I didn’t even qualify.”

“I didn’t know that either,” Cindy added.

“Yeah, apparently I’m jealous, self-obsessed, don’t play well with others.”

Cindy smirked. “That I did know.”

“This isn’t about personality profiles anymore.” Phil seemed to brace himself. “Mr. Grinch, we haven’t delivered any presents yet.”

What? It was nearly one o’clock. Now that was interesting indeed. Tony rubbed the flash drive between his fingers, wondering what secret it held. “What the hell have you been doing all night? Drinking eggnog?”

“Just look at the file.”

Tony backtracked to his computer counter and plugged in the flash drive. While it loaded he called over Cindy. “You know, I thought we were having a moment.”

“I was having twelve percent of a moment.”—Tony winced—“This seems serious. Phil is pretty shaken.”

“How would you…? Why is he Phil?”

Cindy flicked his cheek gently. “You’re blushing.” She pointed at the screen. “What is all this?”  
Tony clicked on the main file. “This is this.” A video began playing, not live captured, but put together right out of someone’s memories to convey vital information. Tony couldn’t help but critique the poor quality to himself. Mixing science and magic… Yeesh.

What it lacked in style it made up for in content, though. A sorcerer of some kind, and apparently he had kicked butt up at the North Pole.

Cindy whistled. “You got your work cut out for you…”

“What makes you think I’m going to do it?”

She looked at him sternly. “Tony, you’re going to do it. You’re nicer than you like to seem. Plus you haven’t got me a Christmas present yet. This is it. I’m going to head to DC and get the next supply liner cleared with the embassy.”

“What about my Christmas present?” A touch of whine entered his voice. He’ been anticipating his time with Cindy tonight; they were both so busy lately.

“Later.” Cindy leaned close until he could feel her breathe on his ear. Her whispered promise made the flush in his cheeks grow darker. 

“Okay. I’ll go save Christmas for the fat man.”

That earned him a goodbye kiss that went a long way to lightening the color in his cheeks.

Tony turned back to his computer screen as Cindy left with Phil.

“So any chance you’re flying by LaGuardia?” he heard her ask.

“I can take you.”

“Fantastic. Oh, I want to hear about the cutie down in Wrapping. Is that still a thing?”

“She transferred to a field position in Portland.”

~o~o~

Rudy landed at the North Pole and looked around. There was nothing but flat ice for miles around. A frozen wasteland. Santa’s colorful, brightly lit workshop was nowhere to be found.

“Okay…”

Suddenly a sound made him glanced upwards; someone was descending on one of those flying machines. He backed out of its way. The figure acknowledged him with a smile as he came to ground level but continued speaking into the commination device in his hat. “…found him. You were right, he doesn’t know where it is.” The elf waited, listening, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll wait for him.”

When the elf disconnected the call, Rudy asked, “This is the North Pole, right? Not the South Pole or something? I swear I must have gotten turned around.”

“Oh no, you’re in the right place, sir. It’s just we’ve moved recently.”

“You moved the North Pole?” Why would they move the—How would they move the North Pole?

“Yes. Technology, you know. Um. I’m here to escort you, uh, the rest of the way. I’m just waiting for Jack Frost to get here; he doesn’t know we’ve moved, either.”

“Frost? St. Nick said Jack Frost was dead.”

The elf shrugged. “Not strictly true. Jack Frost, as you knew him, had an accident with the Hourglass back when it was still in the Bermuda Triangle. He’s not really the same guy anymore.”

“Bermuda Triangle?”

“The uh, the Atlantic Ocean. Just a small part of it, triangle-shaped. Weird weather. Showed up after you… after WW2.”

The elf fell silent while Rudy thought over this new information. If Jack Frost was still alive, then it made him the only person Rudy knew from his own time. Of course, Rudy didn’t know Frost personally—they’d only met once, in Russia, where Frost had been giving the Germans the hardest winter they’d ever had—but they ran in the same professional circles. They might have something to talk about.

Suddenly the elf spoke again, jarring Rudy out of his thoughts.

“I’m Phil. Head Elf Phil. I got to say, it’s an honor to meet you officially. I sort of met you. I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was present while you were unconscious from the ice.” The elf seemed to realize he sounded incredibly awkward and faltered. “It’s really… just a huge honor to have you on this…”

Rudy rescued him by replying. “I hope I’m the one for the job.”

“Oh you are. Absolutely,” the elf said with surprising conviction. “I hope you stay, after this is cleared up. We could use you on the Christmas Eve team.”

Rudy thought of his the children he’d seen in this new age, all playing with technological gadgets he couldn’t hope to understand, all being pushed to learn thousands of new things and grow up successfully. Rudy had not known there was so many ways to “mess up” a child until he came to the twenty first century and discovered self-help books and reality TV shows. Childhood seemed very short for these kids. “You think? Isn’t Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer kind of...”—he shrugged—“childish?”

“Christmas is for children, the children inside everyone. I think we all could use a reminder of that.”

Presently another flying machine whirred its way down to meet them. Its rider shut it down and stepped off. Although it was wrapped in a miniature fur-lined parka, Rudy could tell it was an old-fashioned Raggedy Ann doll.

“Rudolph, this is Annie Mattel, one of our best recon officers.”

The doll gave him a short wave and turned to Phil. “They need you on the Bridge. They’re starting the sleigh-launch prep. I’m here to babysit.”

Phil nodded, suddenly much more professional, and hopped onto his own reindeer.

Rudy frowned. If Phil was headed back to the Pole… “Couldn’t I just follow him now?”

The doll shook her head. “Wait for Frost with me. He’ll be able to see your nose. I don’t want to have to go searching and risk surprising him.”

Rudy obligingly let his nose shine a little brighter; it cast a red light on the snow around them. “How’s he getting here?”

Annie shrugged. “He didn’t want a ride.” She let the silence stand a moment, and then gave him a sly smile. “It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Phil was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Rudolph trading cards yet?”

“Trading cards?”

“They’re vintage, human-made. He’s very proud.”

Just then a figure became visible in the scarce moonlight, not too far away. It was Jack Frost, wearing canvas pants and a cotton shirt and dark circles under his eyes. It was very odd to see someone dressed so sparsely in the freezing snow, but Frost didn’t seem disturbed in the least.

He looked at them both. “I was starting to think I was lost.” 

“You walk here?” Rudy asked.

He nodded. “Last few miles. Flew in myself before that, but it wasn’t pretty. They told me you’d be coming. I’m Jack Frost.”

“We’ve met before. Russia, 1940.”

“I remember. It was a long time ago. I’m different.” 

Phil was definitely right. This was not the same Jack Frost Rudy had met. Instead of exuberance and geniality, Frost had a haunted, self-conscious demeanor. 

“The word is you can find the Hourglass.”

Frost gave a dry half-grin. “Is that the only word on me?”

“The only word I care about,” Rudy said firmly.

“Gentlemen, if you’re ready to go?” Annie interjected. “Mr. Frost you can hitch a ride with me.”

After a moment of hesitation, Frost climbed on board the doll’s reindeer. “Straight up, Rudolph,” she said.

“Where are we going?” Rudy scanned the horizon as they rose higher and higher. “Is it in a cave, or something?”

Frost laughed. “Really? They want me in a small, enclosed space made of ice?”

Suddenly the familiar sounds of elves chattering, reindeer hoofs, and even sleigh bells made Rudy glanced upwards.

Astounding. So that was where they moved it…

A few feet below, Frost groaned. “Oh no, this is much worse.”

~o~o~

Loki was headed up the stairway of a long abandoned warehouse to talk to Selvig about supplies for the teleporter when his staff throbbed violently. Chronos was calling, and the Incarnation of Time was very impatient. Loki stopped moving as the world vanished around him and was replaced by a dark space. It may have been a cave, or a box, or anything. Loki couldn’t tell because anytime he looked squarely at something, it dissolved into blackness. Despite the darkness and apparent nonexistence of any walls, shadows still managed to form. There were many of them, moving jerkily or slinking slowly, seeming to watch him. Loki knew they were not actually shadows but memories, collecting by Chronos for his own uses. They were to be his army.

Chronos, of course, did not show himself. “My shadows grow restless.” His voice hissed from everywhere and nowhere. 

Loki was not about to be intimidated. “Let them wait. I will lead them in glorious battle.”

“Battle? Against children?”

“Glorious, not lengthy.” Loki paused, deciding to push a little. “If your force is as formidable as you claim.”

As he suspected, that got a rise out of the otherworldly being. “You question me? I, who put the staff in your hand? Who gave you ancient power and new purpose, when you were cast out, defeated?”

“I was a king!” Loki spat, with more emotion than he meant to. “The rightful king of Toyland, betrayed.”

Chronos scoffed. “Your ambition is little, and born of childish need. I look beyond petty holidays. The Hourglass will give me the world.”

“You don’t have the Hourglass yet.” 

Suddenly every shadow in the space stopped moving. They swelled, coming closer to him, looking far more substantial than before. Loki remained calm. “I don’t threaten, but until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words.”

The shadows retreated. “You will have your war, toy prince. If you fail, if the Hourglass is kept from me, there will be no realm, no barren waste, no crevice, where I can’t find you. You think you know pain? I will make you long for something as sweet as pain.”

Something cold brushed the back of his neck. Loki jumped in surprise, but his feet were stuck fast to the ground and he lost his balance. He fell to his knees, and when his hands touched the ground, they started to dissolve—

“You alright there?”

Loki was on the staircase, slumped against the railing. That miserably cheerful elf he’d possessed was crouched on the next step up, watching him.

“Talking to the boss? Guess you bit off more than you can chew.”

“None of your business,” Loki snapped. “Get back to work!”

“Hey, don’t stress out. You’ve got us, right?” Clint tapped his own chest and winked, as if two elves and a couple dozen sullen, resentful toys from the recesses of Toy Land could accomplish anything together. “Everybody needs someone at their back.”

Loki sighed, perfectly disgusted. The elf was his to command, completely malleable—but nothing Loki had tried could make him into something he wasn’t: a Christmas elf. “Like your precious Annie, right?” Clint had urged Loki more than once to get his partner in on this scheme because they worked better together.

The elf nodded. “Yeah. You should really meet her. You’d probably get along. You’re both toys. Well, back to taking over the world, huh?”

As the elf continued up the stairs, Loki sighed once more. The small, sane part f his mind that always spoke up when he’d taken his mischief too far was whispering insistent warnings about Chronos, but Loki silenced it harshly. “I’m not a toy,” he growled, making a resolution to find this Annie and rip out all of her seams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few notes:
> 
> Raggedy Ann dolls have red hair and there was an internet legend awhile back about one that was possessed. So I thought it was a good fit for the Black Widow. Mattel is the name of the company that owns Barbie.
> 
> Krampus, according to Wikipedia, is an evil German version of Santa Claus, and he made the perfect substitute for the Red Skull.
> 
> I'm assuming people know who Cindy Lou Who is, but Max is the Grinch's dog in the story.
> 
> Also, "Like Christmas, but with more …me." I've been waiting for that line since I started the story.


	5. What to Wondering Eyes Should Appear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes present-delivery, because this is a Christmas story and it had to happen. But who delivers them, hm?
> 
> Trigger Warning: Loki's attack on the art/gala thing from the movie has been transferred to a school. Children will be in danger. Rating still the same.

Frost was worried about the cold. On the one hand, it was incredibly refreshing. He felt alive, even after what had happened when he tried to fly north. On the other hand, there was what had happened when he tried to fly up north. Nobody, as far as he knew, had been hurt, but he was obviously not in control, and cold was giving him energy to burn. The North Pole would not be a good place to let it out.

Especially a North Pole that was flying—sitting the air, his element, waiting to be batted around by a hurricane or blizzard. The thought gave him chills, and that wasn’t helping either. He wasn’t sure he would’ve have come if he’d known about this.

He was here now, though, and he was going to make the best of it. He watched Rudolph gaze in unabashed astonishment at the bustling interior of the North Pole. No doubt he saw it all as miraculously high-tech. Poor guy had a surprise coming to him if he ever met the Grinch…

They entered Atrium, and Frost tried to stay out of everyone’s way. Their escort, Miss Mattel, immediately left them to interrogate one of the elves working in the room. The place bustled with movement, with people watching screens and monitoring radios and other activities he couldn’t even guess at. Mrs. Claus—she couldn’t be anything else, with that tone of voice—was giving a report to St. Nick himself. Frost watched him warily, half listening to the report. The man had tried to have him killed more than once already…

“…three DC engines are operating. Rescue ops is complete and all vital repairs are underway. Time is 1:04 am Greenwich. We have less than five hours until children start waking up and finding no presents.”

“What’s our status on that?” Nick asked.

“Phil’s on his way up from the launch pad. The back-up sleigh is ready whenever you are. It’s not as fast and can’t carry as much, but that’s a negligible problem at this point. Presents are currently being shipped in bulk to pick-up points at our recon HQs, courtesy of the Grinch. He loaned us his drones, but unfortunately he’s downsized quite a bit and it’s going slower than we’d like. Worst comes to worst, we can have elves deliver gifts to all but a few children. I’ve got Sitwell drawing up a list of the kids who consistently wake up to see Santa; those one you’ll have to visit personally, sir.”

“If I left now, when would I finish?”

“The projections put it at sometime next week.”

Nick shook his head. “We have to find that Hourglass.”

At last, Nick turned to Frost and Rudolph. “Gentlemen. Welcome to the North Pole. It’s not very merry at the moment.”

“Sir,” Rudolph said. “You can forward those letters to me.”

Frost glanced at Nick, wondering what that was supposed to mean. St. Nick cocked an eyebrow but said nothing more, so Frost let it go. He had enough to focus on. St. Nick held out a hand for Frost to shake. “Mr. Frost, thank you for coming.”

He sounded sincere. Frost took accepted it, forgetting that his own hands were literally ice cold until Nick flinched slightly. “Sorry, I usually wear gloves. Thanks for asking nicely, by the way.”

Nick seemed to take in his attire for the first time. “If you’re cold we can get you some warmer clothes.”

Frost was never cold, but he knew he tended to make other people uncomfortable walking around like a snowbird in Florida. If they wanted to bundle him up he wasn’t going to argue. It wasn’t worth it. “Sure. How long am I staying?”

“Once we get our hands on the Hourglass, you’re in the wind.”

“And where are you with that?”

Another elf approached. “I’m the one working on it, Mr. Frost. Name’s Phil. Everyone not working on present-delivery is running recon all over the globe. If there’s a child’s house within a hundred kilometers, we’ve got eyes and ears there, watching for Loki or the Hourglass.”

Annie spoke up from her perch by a row of computer screens. “That’s still not going to find them in time.”

Frost was inclined to agree. Trying to track the Hourglass using weather patterns had seems far-fetched when Annie explained it, but even that was better than searching the globe by hand. “You have to narrow your field. You got anybody who can hack me into the human satellite systems?”

Nick nodded. “If you need it, Frost, we’ll make sure you get it, if I have to drag a human up here. But I think one’s of Phil’s people should be able do the trick.”

“I’ll get Skye on it,” said the elf.

The idea of having a problem to solve was refreshing. “Alright. I’ll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have some place for me to work?”

“Mattel, will you show Mr. Frost to his observatory please?” Nick said.

The doll hopped to attention. “You’re going to love it, Frost. We got all the toys.”

~o~o~

Loki had to admit, it was slightly amusing seeing the tiny elf Selvig ordering about the cold-hearted mercenaries Loki had acquired to smooth along his plan. They grumbled as Selvig directed their tiniest movements.

“Put it over there. No, closer. Good. Now don’t walk too loudly; you’ll shake the diagrams out of line.”

Selvig caught sight of Loki and grinned. “Where did you find all these people?”

“Toyland has no shortage of misfits, and the North Pole has enemies, too.” Loki said. He waved his staff and a flat illusion appeared. “Is this the material you need?”

“Yeah, iridium crystal. It’s found in meteorites. It generates anti-magic. Very hard to get hold of.”

“Especially if the North Pole knows you need it,” Loki replied.

Selvig shrugged, only half paying attention in favor of his work. “Hey, I didn’t know. And don’t ask me again how much longer it’ll take, either. You can’t rush a mechanic.” 

Loki had by now come to the conclusion that Chronos’s marvelous mind-control technique could not alter deeply-ingrained personality traits. Selvig was an incurable egghead, and a tyrant when it came to his work. Loki sighed. They needed to move this along. “Clint.”

The elf dropped down from the ceiling. Loki didn’t bother wondering how he got up there. It was another one of those stubborn personality traits. “Sir.”

“Can you get me enough iridium crystal for Selvig’s teleporter?”

A pause as the elf thought it over seriously. “Sure. Very tricky though.”

“Tell me what you need.”

Clint scurried to a nearby case and popped it open. Inside was a bow, which Clint snapped out to its full length. It was someone Clint had demanded he have, along with specialize tranq arrows. It had been the devil to get hold of, but as long as the elf was accurate with it, Loki didn’t care.

“I need a distraction. And a scream.”

~o~o~

“I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No, no it’s fine.” Rudy said, desperately embarrassed. Phil was a very nice elf, but Rudy wasn’t cut out to be a legend. He shuffled slightly before remembering that his hoofs might wake the children sleeping in the house below him. They didn’t want to wake anyone up, not when Santa wasn’t actually the one delivering presents to this house. With the recon trace running and Frost skimming global weather patterns, there was nothing to do about the Hourglass but wait, so everyone who could be spared had been sent out with a pack of presents to deliver. Rudy had volunteered to help, unable to resist the idea of doing a present-run one more time, and the Head Elf had immediately volunteered to be his wingman.

Currently Phil was unloading presents from the pack on Rudy’s back and dropping them gently down the chimney. Once he had them all down there, he’d jump down himself and arrange them under the tree. “It’s a vintage set. Took me a couple years to collect them all,” Phil continued as he dropped the last one, a suspiciously soccer-ball shaped package, down the chimney. “Near mint. Slight foxing around the edges…”

Suddenly both their hatcomms buzzed. Rudy’s was not actually a Santa hat but a jingle-bell collar—his own, in fact, from the war. 

Mrs. Claus’s matter of fact tones sounded clearly in the quiet night. “Got a hit on Loki. Three elves reporting the same face. It’s him alright. No Hourglass.” 

Phil answered her, all business once more. “Location?”

“Stuttgart, Germany. 28 Koningstrasse. He’s not exactly hiding.”

Fury joined their conversation from his own hatcomm. “Rudolph, you’re up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Both Rudy and Phil glanced at the chimney. Should they go down and straighten up the presents? Santa didn’t usually leave presents lying in heap in the fireplace, after all.

Phil shrugged. “They’ll get the idea.”

~o~o~

Loki was happy to be out in the fresh air, even if it was the middle of the night—well, quite a bit later than the middle of the night, now, he thought with satisfaction. In just a few hours children, all over the world would be waking up to a Christmas without presents. Shortly after that they would get an even ruder awakening.

Loki was disguised, through illusion, to look more or less human, staff morphed into a spiffy cane that he twirled absently as he strode down the upper-class street. Christmas parties were just winding down all over the block, but Loki’s destination was a building that had been quiet for several hours now…

He walked through the gated courtyard of the elementary school, sneering at the modest tree that grew in one corner and was decorated cheerfully with lanterns and the tacky hand-made ornaments kindergarten classes produced by the thousand every year. The front door of the school was not locked—and what then, he thought, was the point of calling it a Christmas Lock-In?—but he blasted it open with a touch of his staff anyway. The noise stimulated movement in the classrooms surrounding the lobby. Loki looked around for the red lever Clint had informed him about, and saw it on the far wall with a handwritten sign above it: Do NOT pull unless there is a fire. You WILL get detention.

He pulled it.

It was the most lovely, chaotic sound he had ever heard, and within moments it had been joined by the shrieks of children as they rushed out of their classrooms in pajamas and bare feet, trailing blankets and stuffed animals and groggy teachers. They moved like an ocean wave, swelling and dispersing in chaotic patches. Loki decided they needed herding and enriched his illusion to make himself as frightening as possible—wickedly pointed staff, dark cowl and cloak, twisting horns… Then he cast several doubles of himself throughout the crowd of children.

As they scrambled to get away, their screams intensified. He trapped them in the courtyard, where the Christmas tree once again caught his eye. He looked at his staff. It was excellent for melting things—what it really did was make them age instantly—but could he possibly get a little fire?

He tried it. The tree flamed beautifully. He was ready with a human phone when everyone in the courtyard shrieked at the sight, recording it for Clint. The elf had explained that he needed the sound to break the protections surrounding the iridium crystal. Loki hit send, and then discarded the phone over his shoulder.

He turned to the group of children.

“Kneel before me,” he commanded imperiously. 

No one listened; everyone, even the teachers, was still panicking. Loki frowned, irritated. He aimed a strong bolt of magic at the front of the school and used the destruction to emphasize his command. “I said KNEEL!”

Everyone obeyed. Some children appeared too young to understand the word and their teachers obligingly illuminated the gap in their knowledge. Loki grinned. What sheep the humans were.

“Now was that too hard?” he said sweetly. “It’s just like story-time, right? I have story for you. A Christmas story, for Christmas Eve.” His tone hardened. “Santa Claus isn’t real. There are no flying reindeers. Elves don’t make toys especially for you; your parents buy them, mass-produced, from department stores. And then they lie to you.” Many children looked like they’d been physically slapped. Reveling in their terror and disillusionment, he continued: “And the toys? They’re alive. And they all hate you, because every one of you is selfish, ungrateful spoiled brat.”

He ended up spitting out the last words with such feeling that he nearly failed to notice a single little girl stand up to her full height (which admittedly wasn’t much). She was wearing black pajamas with “Batman” written all over them, and her hair was braided into a dozen or so strands and clipped haphazardly to the top of her head with a pink butterfly. She had her thumb in her mouth. The nearest teacher hissed at her to get down. 

Loki fixed his venomous gaze on her. She was nearly the same age and size as that insufferable child Thor was so attached to. “Kneel.”

The girl spoke but did not take her thumb out of her mouth; it colored her words oddly. “Mama says I shouldn’t wisten to people wike you.”

Loki scoffed at her. “There are no people like me.”

The girl stared at him solemnly. “There is too. You’re bully. There’s aw-ways bullies.”

Loki pursed his lips. He didn’t have to listen to the stupid girl. She didn’t know anything. He raised his staff, pointed it at her, a smiled sweetly. “You didn’t raise your hand before speaking, darling.”

~o~o~

The flaming Christmas tree made the place pretty easy to find. Rudy flew in at top speed, having deposited Phil with the jet—what in the world did the North Pole need a jet for?—that met him enroute to Germany, for auxiliary support. Annie and Phil were both capable elves; Rudy was glad to have them watching his back.

As Rudy got closer, he saw Loki standing over a crowd of frightened children, aiming his deadly staff at a girl. Rudy dropped into a nosedive, landing in front of the girl and flashing his nose as brightly as it would go.

Before the war, before Erskine’s serum, Rudy’s nose had not been very impressive, even when he flashed it. It was just odd. Now it was still odd, but it was also very impressive. The flash he directed at Loki—and everyone else in sight, unfortunately—was bright enough to blind him for several seconds. The renegade Toylander staggered backwards, his shot going wide. Rudy took flight again and swept several children out of the way of the errant blast with his antlers. They’d have bruises later, probably, but they were better off than the cobblestones they had just been crouching on were. One of the stones, loosened by the destruction of the others around it, called out to Rudy to be hurled at Loki and Rudy obliged it. Sent flying through the air by a clever flick of Rudy’s antlers, the stone hit the still-disoriented Loki square in the chest. He fell backwards.

“You know, last time I was in Germany and I saw a man burning Christmas trees, we ended up disagreeing.”

Loki, recovering quickly—far too quickly for Rudy’s taste—laughed. “The reindeer. The soldier out of time.”

“I’m not the one who’s out of time.”

“Loki, drop the weapon and stand down.” Somewhere above them in the sky, Annie’s voice was being projected by the jet’s PA system.

Rudy saw Loki glance between him and the jet. The staff went into action again, blasting destructive magic at the jet, and Rudy charged. All around him children were fleeing the courtyard, hopefully out into the street, where Rudy could hear police sirens. He dodged several blasts from the staff and crashed heavily into Loki. The Toylander blocked the blow with his staff, twisting it viciously in Rudy’s antlers and using the leverage to sling him into the burning Christmas tree. The flames bit at his coat and Rudy staggered away, dazed.

He felt Loki’s staff press down on his head and he blinked, trying to clear his vision. “Kneel,” growled the toy.

Rudy took a deep breath. “Not today.” He flashed his nose once more, then used his antlers to swipe Loki’s feet out from under him. Loki recovered all too quickly and they resumed battling. As Loki knocked him across the courtyard once more, Rudy hailed Annie on his comm. “Can I get a little help here?”

Annie’s voice was apologetic. “I could drop tranq dust, but it doesn’t do anything to him. You’d be the one sleep—”

Suddenly her voice cut off, replaced by a thundering, electronic noise that Rudy had recently learned was called “rock music.” He could understand the “rock” bit, but “music” he had a hard time believing…

“You’re a mean one, Mister Griiiiinnnnch!”

Rudy glanced upwards and caught sight of a flying figure, much smaller than the jet, zooming towards the courtyard. Within seconds it was close enough to be identifiable as man-shaped. It launched a metal disc at Loki that hit him solidly in the chest and sparked with electricity. Loki was blown backwards, landing roughly on the cobblestones.

The Grinch landed in the courtyard just in time for the last phrase of the song, which faded out shortly after. (Rudy assumed it was a phrase; it kind of just sounded like screeching.) Rudy galloped over to join him.

“Make a move, Reindeer Games.”

Rudy’s gaze flicked from Loki’s horns to the Grinch. Seriously? They weren’t even close to being antlers.

Loki peered at the Grinch suspiciously.

“That was an electrical pulse followed by an EMP. Kills drones but it looks like it works pretty well on you. Shall I try another one?”

Loki seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then suddenly his appearance changed. His horns were gone and he looked altogether less threatening. He put his hands up.

“Good move.”

Rudy glanced at the Grinch sideways. So this was Howard’s son. “Mr. Grinch,” he said stiffly.

The Grinch nodded just as stiffly, although it might have been the mechanical armor he was wearing. “Rudolph.”


	6. Leaves that Before the Wild Hurrican Fly

Tony was thinking that he should get Rhodey to let him have on of these jets for keepers. His old friend had been about as enthusiastic about loaning him a US government scout-jet as he had been about being woken at two am on Christmas morning by Tony’s call. Tony could see why, though: this thing probably cost over fifty million dollars. It was state of the art, at least as far as government tech went. Tony could build better, obviously. Maybe he should look into that…

“Is he saying anything?” It was St. Nick, the Man-with-the-Bag himself, and he was communicating via Annie’s hatcomm rather than the jet’s perfectly good long distance radio. Apparently elves were too high brow to use human tech, which was pretty rich considering that they’d had to ask him for the jet in the first place. Tony wasn’t about to needle Annie about it though; it was too risky. The doll was similar to Cindy in that she always managed to hold her own with Tony’s pranks and jibes, and dissimilar in that her retaliation was nearly always unpleasant. He was already wondering what she might to do him for hacking her PA system earlier. (Although technically it his PA system, since it was his jet.)

Annie was piloting the jet, despite being about two and half feet too short to do so, but she had shot down his offer to drive with a succinct and inarguable, “No.” She was managing well enough, though. 

“Not a word, sir.” Phil, who was also on board, answered Nick.

“Just get him here. We’re low on time.”

Tony turned away from the cockpit and back to the rear hatch, where Rudolph was watching Loki. Tony was starting to get the suspicion that the legendary reindeer was a stick in the mud.

“I don’t like it,” Rudolph said when Tony approached.

“What, Genghis Khan’s favorite toy giving up so easily?”

“I don’t remember it being that easy. The guy packs a wallop.”

Tony smirked. “Yeah, PETA’s going to be on his back for that. Burning trees, beating up elderly reindeer…”

“What?”

“PETA.” The fellow didn’t know about PETA yet? Oh boy. Tony wished his face plate was down so he could discretely tell Max to make a list of things to shock the displaced reindeer with. Had Santa-stripper outfits been around in the forties? “You might have missed a couple things while you were doing a wooly mammoth impersonation.”

Rudy glanced at him, looking more and more like a wet blanket by the second. “St. Nick didn’t tell me he was calling you in.”

Tony snorted. Soldier-boy here probably thought that Santa Claus was the fount of all virtue. “There’s a lot of things St. Nick doesn’t tell you.”

Suddenly a huge thunder clap interrupted his train of thought. Tony was not one to get distracted by a storm, but this noise had been absolutely huge. Tony debated heading back to the cockpit to take over. Weather was one of his many areas of expertise; he’d had enough close calls with the suit to make sure he kept up-to-date on atmospherology.

From the door of the cockpit, Phil asked Annie, “Where’s this storm coming from?”

As always, the doll’s reply was cool and unaffected. “Out of nowhere, apparently.” Tony wondered what the secret to getting a rise out of her was.

Another thunderclap. Tony noticed that their captive was sitting on the edge of his seat, alert.

“What’s the matter?” Rudy mocked. “Scared of a little lightning?”

The Toylander glanced at the jet’s rear hatch. “I’m not overly fond of what follows.”

Suddenly one of the viewing ports crashed inward, shattered by—what else?—a toy-sized man. He looked around, seeming to realize how small he was compared to everyone else, and abruptly started to swell in size. It was bizarre and fascinating. The toy continued to grow until it smacked it’s head on the ceiling; it then shrunk a by about a foot and stopped. It occurred to Tony that he probably should have been doing something other than stare for the last sixty seconds. He snapped his faceplate back in place and pointed a blaster at the intruder.

The movement earned him a blow from the toy’s hammer that knocked him off his feet and into the cockpit. The cockpit, of course, was far too small to accommodate the suit and two elves. He had a feeling he was squashing either Phil or Annie. By the time he extricated himself the intruder had already left with Loki out the rear hatch.

He huffed. “Now there’s that guy.”

Annie had, remarkably, retained control of the jet. “Another Toylander?” she asked, shouting over the wind that spilled in through the open hatch.

“That guy’s a friendly?” Rudy said incredulously.

“Doesn’t matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Hourglass is lost.” Tony checked on Phil, who waved him off, apparently unhurt. Then he stalked to the rear hatch.

“Grinch, we need a plan of attack.” Rudy said.

“I have a plan. Attack,” Tony replied, launching himself into the storm.

~o~o~

Thor landed on the mountain top a little harder than he meant to. Then again, when Thor was upset, he usually did everything a little harder than he meant to, and Thor thought it was safe to say that right now, he was thoroughly ticked. The sight of his brother lying on the ground laughing his head off didn’t help.

Loki grinned at him. “I have to say, you managed that growth spell spectacularly!”

Thor got to the point, certain for once that his often-mocked bluntness was entirely justified at this moment. “Where is the Hourglass?”

Loki continued laughing. “Oh, I missed you, too.”

“Do I look to be in a gaming mood?”

“Oh, you should thank me,” he said, getting up. His voice started out light but grew more hostile as he continued. “With the Hourglass gone, how much dark energy did Odin have to muster to conjure you here? To your precious earth?”

More than they had to spare, but Thor was not going to give Loki the satisfaction of knowing that. Reacting to his pranks always encouraged the trickster. With the Hourglass gone, keeping the Island of Lost Toys separate from the human world was taking the efforts of everyone with any sort of magical knowledge.

The smug look on Loki’s face told Thor that his brother already knew too well what his shenanigans had done. Letting his temper get the better of him momentarily, Thor roughly hauled Loki up from the ground. Almost automatically, he loosened his grip to avoid damaging Loki, a habit born of years of play and fighting. It was strange to realize that there was a reason for Look’s daintiness compared to other toys.

“I thought you dead,” Thor said softly.

Loki’s expression was unforgiving. “Did you mourn?”

Thor thought back to the day when Loki had fallen—had let go—into the chaotic void that surrounded Toyland and kept it isolated from the outside world. “We all did. Everyone. ‘All toys are brothers; brothers stand together.’”

Loki tensed at the old Toylander motto, jerking away from Thor’s grasp. “I am not a toy! We are not brothers!” He stalked away a few paces. “Odin did tell you my true heritage, did he not?”

He had. Personally, Thor could not see what difference it made if Loki had made as a collectible figure rather than a toy, and not meant to be played with. So what if it made Loki less hardy than toys built to withstand the enthusiastic ministrations of three year olds. They were still brothers. “We’ve been together for centuries. We played together. We fought together. Do you remember none of that?”

“I remember a shadow. Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss. I who was, and should be king!” 

…tossing Loki into an abyss? Thor could not even begin to unravel what had happened to his brother to make him misremember so drastically. How was he to fix this? Thor struggled to keep an even temper. “So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights? No. The children of Earth are under my protection, Loki.”

Loki laughed. “And you’re doing a marvelous job with that. Children go hungry, children are lonely, children are hurt all over the globe while you idly fret. I mean to put them out of this misery for good.”

“By destroying the myths that keep them happy? By making them all grow up too soon?”

“Yes.” Loki didn’t seem surprised that Thor knew that detail of his plan. In truth, it was one of very few that Heimdall had been able to glean back in Toyland.

“Then you miss the truth of childhood, brother.” Thor found himself wishing, for just a moment, that Odin had exiled Loki, instead of himself—that Loki had had a chance to meet a child like Jane, and learn the lessons Thor had about toyhood.

Loki was angry now, and not listening. “I’ve seen worlds you’ve never known about. I have grown, Prince of Toys, in my exile. I have seen the true power of the Hourglass and when I wield—”

“Who showed you this power?” Thor interrupted harshly. Who was it that had fished Loki out of the void, that was even now providing him an army? “Who controls the would-be king?”

“I am a king!” Loki shouted.

Thor matched his vehemence, seizing Loki once more. “Not here! You give up the Hourglass! You give up this poisonous dream.” Seeing not even a ghost of compliance in his brother’s eyes, Thor sighed. Why couldn’t Loki understand? “You come home.”

Loki shook his head. “I don’t have it.”

Fuming, Thor held out his free hand, summoning his hammer. Loki raised both hands. “You need the Hourglass to bring me home but I’ve sent it off I know not where.”

Thor was tired of this endless scheming. “You listen well, brother…”

Suddenly something slammed into him a forced that compared to Mjolnir, knocking him off the mountaintop.

~o~o~

Mr. Implausibly-Huge-Hammer was a lot harder to shift than Tony had anticipated. They both ended crashing somewhere on the side of the mountain. Tony was pretty sure that between the two of them they knocked over a few trees. Tony was the first to get to his feet, and he opened up his faceplate. 

The Toylander glared at him. “Do not touch me again.”

“Then don’t take my stuff.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

Was this guy was real? “Uh, the Ghost of Christmas Past? You look like the fourth century threw up all over you.”

“This is beyond you, metal-man. Loki will face justice on the Island of Lost Toys.”

Tony snapped down his mask. “He gives up the Hourglass, he’s all yours. Until then, stay out of the way.” Tony powered up his thrusters, turning to take off. “Tourist.”

Next thing Tony, knew he was on the ground, smarting despite the suit’s protection. Tony eyed the damage warnings on his HUD. The stat that monitored his blood pressure was also blinking, informing him that his new desire to wallop the toy over the head with his own hammer had darkened his complexion by several degrees. “Okay.”

The toy wanted a fight, he was going to get one.

Tony got to his feet, slowly, feinting as he came up to catch the toy warrior by surprise. Tony blasted him with pure energy from a hand repulsor. He was too close to use one his drone-killing projectiles, even though it had seemed to work well on the other toy; the EMP would frazzle his suit. The blast did the trick, though, forcing the toy backwards. While he was still recovering, Tony launched into the air and delivered a powerful kick to his chest. Unfortunately this idea went south very quickly as the warrior seized his foot and used it the slam Tony into the ground. No new damage warnings, at least. Tony sprang to his feet as quickly as he could. 

Lightning. The toy had directed a bolt of lightning at Tony and suddenly he couldn’t move. His suit was going to short out, and he couldn’t even do anything. After an alarmingly long six seconds, it stopped, and Tony cringed, waiting for the damage reports to come flying in.

“Power at four hundred percent capacity, sir.”

Tony smirked. Being a genius paid off. “How about that.”

He used all the excess power to send a resounding blast at the toy, which sent him flying into a nearby tree. Very nice. Let’s see him get up from that.

Unfortunately, he did, and he managed to clip Tony with that damn hammer again. Tony responded with a blast to his face. Oh, this guy was going down.

~o~o~

The Grinch obviously did not understand the concept of a plan. Rudy prepared to take off after him, but Annie called back to him from the cockpit.

“I’d sit this one out, Rudy. Toylanders come from legend; they practically leak magic. They’re basically gods.”

Rudy glanced at her, and then at Phil, who nodded shortly to confirm her statement but looked more than willing to see Rudy in action.

Rudy huffed. “There’s only one god, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”

Rudy flew out into the storm, following the lightning. Hadn’t Loki said that the either Toylander had something to do with it? He didn’t have to go far before finding Grinch and the Toylander—in fact, they nearly crashed into him, careening through the air, locked together. Rudy was about to follow their trajectory over the mountain when he spotted Loki, sitting on a rock outcropping. He landed on the mountain near him. Loki didn’t seem surprised to see him; nor was he fazed by Rudy’s stern look.

“I didn’t do anything. I’m just listening to Thor.”

Rudy glanced in the direction the others had gone. He ha the distinct feeling that Loki was missing a few screws and was well aware of it. “Stay put,” Rudy ordered. Turning on his comms, he hailed Annie and Phil. “Loki’s on the side of the mountain. Come keep an eye on him while I get the other two.”

Finding Grinch and the Toylander proved to be only a matter of following the felled trees. The two were hauling off at each other in a semi-destroyed clearing. This was ridiculous. As he watched, they both took a swing at each other. He flashed his nose brightly.

They weren’t looking at him, but it was enough to make them both miss. “Hey!” he shouted. “That’s enough.”

He landed a few yards away, and addressed the Toylander. “Now I don’t know what you plan on doing here…”

“I’ve come to put a stop to Loki’s schemes!”

An ally, then. If Rudy could calm him down. “Then prove it. Put the hammer down.”

The Grinch, of course, had to get in his two cents. “Oh no, bad call. He loves his ha—”

The Grinch was cut off as a backhand from the hammer in question sent him flying. The Toylander did not look at all to be in a negotiating mood.

“You want me to put the hammer down?” he shouted. He launched into the air towards Rudy. 

Rudy didn’t want to be on the other end of that hammer when it came down. Acting on a hunch, he flashed his nose once more, as brightly as he had ever done, casting a brilliant red glow on the whole clearing—then he dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way.

The hammer’s impact was impressive, sending a reverberation through the ground that kept Rudy rolling much farther than he intended, right into the base of a tree. When it ended, he glanced around the clearing. Grinch was nearly out of sight, at the far end of the clearing. Rudy was satisfied to see that his hunch had paid off—the Toylander had also been blown back, away from his hammer. The thing about hitting something from the air was that if you had too much momentum you couldn’t change direction. It was a lesson Rudy had spent awhile learning; the Toylander obviously hadn’t learned it yet. Between that and the flash, he had lost his grip. 

The three of them got to their feet. 

Rudy glanced at the other two. “We done here?”

~o~o~

Frost didn’t bother to leave his observatory when they brought Loki in. If he was needed, someone would call him, and the search algorithm for the Hourglass wasn’t going to write itself.

An elf had brought by a heavy coat for him earlier, but he’d left it slung over one of the counters. It was a red, fur-lined affair, probably very warm and probably one of St. Nick’s, since Frost couldn’t very fit into an elf-sized coat. Frost and Nick were both about the same height but Frost had a much slighter build and he was sure the coat would swamp him. It was better to leave it off.

Footsteps in the corridor made him look up, and he caught sight of Loki, marching under escort to whatever room they’d rigged up to detain him. Frost found himself staring at the man, more than a little disturbed by his self-satisfied smirk. He was only too glad when Loki and his escort turned the corner and vanished from sight. Shaking off the momentary distraction, Frost turned to check on one of his instruments—

—and slipped on slick ice. His arms flailed as he tried to catch the edge of the counter to steady himself, barely managing to do so. He hung in the awkward position, halfway to the ground, too shocked to move, staring at the patch of ice that had formed on the floor under his feet without his notice. 

This was bad. This was very bad.

“Mr. Frost!” 

Suddenly Frost became aware that the intercom had hailed him several times. “I’m here!”

It was Annie’s voice. “Mr. Frost, could you come to the bridge?”

Frost gave the patch of ice another long look. 

“Be right there.”

He would go to bridge, but first, he was putting on that coat.

~o~o~

Having Loki in a cage should have been extremely satisfying.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be just another item on the long list of things that weren’t going well for St. Nick today. The Toylander looking positively smug. Perhaps he needed a demonstration.

Nick stood on the platform hosting the control panel for the detention capsule, a round squat cylinder made of glass with copper threaded through the seams. He flipped open the control panel’s cover. “In case it’s unclear, you try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass…”

Nick pressed a button, and the floor beneath the cage retreated to show nothing but wind and air all the way to the ground. The wind rushed into the warm space, tugging at Nick’s coat. “Thirty thousand feet, straight down. And it won’t be nice trip, either. See all that copper? It heats up. I don’t care how much Toyland magic you’ve got in you, a couple thousand degrees makes everybody uncomfortable.”

Nick reclosed the drop-doors. “You get how that works?” He pointed to Loki. “Ant.” He pointed to the control panel. “Boot.”

As if knowing exactly which reaction Nick was looking for, Loki gave him the opposite one. He laughed. “Oh it’s an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me.”

Nick didn’t react, although he knew that Frost was watching this somewhere. It was unfortunate, but Frost couldn’t blame them for being prepared. “Built for something a lot stronger than you.”

“Oh, I’ve heard. The mindless monster makes play he’s still a man.”

Nick got the feeling that Loki somehow knew Frost was watching this, too.

“How desperate are you that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?” Loki mocked.

“How desperate am I?” Nick’s voice rose slightly. “You threaten the existence of the holiday I’ve sworn to protect. You steal a force you can’t hope to control. You talk about freedom and then you threaten children. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad you did.”

Loki scoffed but Nick refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing his frustration. 

“It burns you to have come so close. To have the Hourglass, to have power, unlimited power. For what?” Loki’s voice turned mocking again. “A present for every child?”

Phase 2. Clint had told him about Phase 2. Nick gaze sharpened. If he said one more word…

“And then to be reminded what real power is.”

Nick reminded himself that Loki was the one in the cage, and scoffed. “Well, let me know if real power wants some eggnog or something...”

~o~o~

An impressive cage, indeed, Frost thought as the video feed to Santa’s Workshop cut off. Not that it would do any good. It didn’t matter, he told himself. Loki made a much better tenant anyway… 

Frost peered at the other people assembled in the workshop. Besides himself in St. Nick’s oversized coat, there was Rudolph, Annie, Mrs. Claus and another Toylander, who had introduced himself as Thor, Prince of the Island of Toys. No one seemed inclined to speak, and an irrational paranoia that they were all thinking about him sprouted in his mind. He broke the silence uneasily. “That guy used to be some kid’s toy?”

“Loki’s going to drag this out.” Rudy said. “Thor, what’s his play?”

“He has an army bad memories, on loan, I suspect, from an Elder Power. He means to lead them against the children of the Earth, force them to grow up. They will help him destroy Christmas, in return, it seems, for the Hourglass.”

“Elder Power?” asked Rudy. 

“Beings that exist outside this world. Time, Fate, Death…”

Frost frowned, trying to cut through the magic and legends and other nonsense to look at the real problem. An army needed a method of transportation to get from point A to point B. If point B was earth and point A was some magical outside place, it would logically require a powerful object to do the trick. Object in question: the Hourglass.

“He’s building another teleporter, a portal, using the Hourglass.” Everyone seemed surprised to see him speak up. “That’s what he needs Selvig for.”

“Selvig?” Thor said.

“He’s a magical mechanic.”

“He’s a friend.”

“Loki has him under some kind of spell,” Annie explained for Thor’s benefit. “Along with one of ours.”

“I want to know why Loki let us take him,” Cap said. “He’s not leading an army from here.”

Feeling like they were straying from the more important topic, Frost interrupted. “I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy’s brain is like a bag full of broken Christmas bulbs. The pieces don’t make sense no matter which way you put them back together.”

“Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason but he is of Toyland, and he is my brother,” Thor said.

Frost caught Annie’s eye. She seemed to share his opinion. She said, “He tried to melt a six year old girl into sludge.”

“He’s adopted.”

Frost couldn’t believe how quickly they kept getting off track. “I’m worried about the mechanics. Iridium crystal. What do they need the iridium for?”

“It’s a stabilizing agent.”

Everyone turned to the door. It was the infamous Grinch. Frost had never met him, but it would be difficult not to have heard of the ultra-famous human toy-maker. He really was as green as they said.

Grinch didn’t elaborate but turned back to Phil, who had come in with him. “I’m just saying, pick a weekend. I’ll fly you to Portland. Keep love alive.” 

Abruptly he switched his focus back to the group. “It means the portal won’t collapse like the tele porters did earlier.”

A fair idea, Frost realized. Teleportation theory was not exactly his field, but he knew a little about it. The subject was fascinating, anyway.

Grinch made his way through the room, apparently on a mission to antagonize every person he passed. To Thor he gave a semi-friendly swat on the arm. “No hard feelings, GI Joe. You got a mean swing.”

“It also means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants,” he continued as if there had been no interruption. Frost watched him warily. Grinch may have been correct in his conclusions, but his musical-chairs attention span and flippant attitude was slightly overwhelming.

As he passed by Mrs. Claus, Grinch winked at her. “How’s the love life, doll?”

Mrs. Claus replied with a withering stare. “Do you remember what happened last time you made a pass at me, Mr. Grinch?”

The man balked slightly. It was an impressive contrast to his former exuberant confidence, which returned momentarily. “Touché.”

He turned back to everyone else. “The rest of the raw materials your elf Clint can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source of high energy density, something to kickstart it.”

Very clever. Frost ran the idea through his own theories. Loki could use the Hourglass to power the teleporter while the iridium crystal acted as a stabilizer. He would need a secondary power source, though, as Grinch had said, especially if he wanted to continue using the Hourglass while the portal was open. But using the Hourglass would be a tough trick, indeed.

“When did you become an expert in teleportation theory?” asked Mrs. Claus.

“Last night. Selvig’s notes. The extraction-inversion balance papers? Am I the only one who did the reading?”

Rudy interrupted Grinch’s monologue sharply. “Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?”

Frost spoke up. “He’d have to heat the Hourglass to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break the time-inversion buffer.”

“Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum-tunneling effect,” Grinch pointed out.

Frost felt himself warming to the man. “Well if he could do that he could achieve mixed quantum-magic fusion at any hybrid reactor on the planet.”

“Finally, someone who speaks English.” 

“Is that what just happened?” Rudy asked.

Grinch approached and shook Frost’s hand. Frost was pleasantly surprised to see that the man didn’t flinch at the cold. “It’s good to meet you Mr. Frost. Your work on stratospheric entropy configurations is unparalleled, and I am a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous angry snow monster.”

Although Frost wished he’d left that last part off, he beginning to think that the Grinch might be just be alright. “Thanks.”

“Mr. Frost is only here to track the Hourglass.” St. Nick said sternly. When had he arrived? “I was hoping you might join him,” he said to Grinch.

“You should start with that stick of his,” said Rudy. “It may be from Toyland, but it works an awful lot like a Krampus weapon.”

“I don’t know about that, but it is powered by the Hourglass.” Said St. Nick. “And I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I   
know into his personal flying monkeys.”

Thor looked confused. “Monkeys? I do not understand.” 

“I do!” Rudy said. He glanced around at them. “I understood that reference.”

Frost suppressed a small grin. It was extremely amusing how much human cinema fascinated the world’s magical population. Elves, reindeer… Even gruff St. Nick had seen the Wizard of Oz. Then again, he probably wasn’t one to talk, since he’d seen it too.

Tony turned to him. “Shall we play, Mr. Frost?”

“This way.” Frost led the way to the observatory, not altogether displeased by the prospect of company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:
> 
> Yes, I made a joke about Hurricane Sandy. If it was in bad taste, forgive me. My heart goes out to the victims.
> 
> So… bilgesnipe has been replaced with stubydunns. It's an anagram, in the singular (stubydunn). Points for the reader who figures it out. Hint: What might toys be afraid of/dislike?


	7. All through the House

The observatory was much smaller than Tony’s lab back home, and had a distressing lack of power outlets, but this one time Tony didn’t mind the cramped quarters, even if he did have to share them. He was, after all, very interested in the man he was sharing with: Jack Frost, otherwise known as the Abominable Snowman. Tony had seen footage, but he was sure it must not even compare to seeing the winter spirit work in person. Tony was dying to see how much it took to get a rise out of him.

Frost had returned to his work wordlessly when they arrived, grabbing a barometer and a few other instruments to inspect Loki’s staff with after doffing his huge coat. “Barometric readings are definitely consistent with Selvig’s reports from the Hourglass, but it’s going to take weeks to process.”

Tony smirked, popping open a heavy metal case that was packed with a portable supercomputer. He’d known the North Pole would not have sufficient tech capacity for Tony’s modest needs and made sure to bring along plenty of his own. It was disgraceful that the North Pole had failed to keep up with the twenty-first century—although, to be fair, the twenty-first century was having a hard time keeping up with Tony Grinch. “Not after I hook this up to the mainframe. You finish that algorithm and I can clock it at six hundred teraflops.” 

Tony set up the necessary programs to help track the Hourglass and then synced up with Max, who’d been running a very special program of his own since Tony had landed. The wifi here was miserable; if it weren’t a matter of principle for Tony to offer no help whatsoever to St. Nick, he’d offer to reboot their computer system.

Tony glanced at Frost and caught him appraising his equipment. “All I brought was a toothbrush.”

Clearly the man was dying to play with Tony’s toys. “You should come by Grinch Tower sometime. Top ten floors are all R&D. You’d love it. It’s candy land.” Strolling innocently towards Frost, Tony swiped an electrical probe off of a counter.

Frost shook his head. “Thanks, but last time I was in the US… they called it Hurricane Sandy.”

No kidding, Tony thought. All that ice, where did he get it from? Did it appear out of nowhere? Did the air itself freeze? “Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises.”

He tapped Frost in the side with the probe, the electrical current shocking him lightly.

“Ow!” Frost must have jumped a foot. Tony was aware of Rudolph the Fussy-Nosed Reindeer barging into the observatory, but he had both eyes glued on Jack Frost.

“Nothing?”

“Are you nuts?” Rudolph said. Frost just stared at Tony, as if having a hard time believing he had actually tried something so reckless.

“Jury’s out,” Tony said offhand to Rudolph. He was still peering at Frost. “You really got a lid on it, haven’t you? What’s your secret? Christmas carols? Candy canes? Huge bag of weed?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Apparently, the reindeer was not going to just go away if when ignored. Tony turned to him and pretended to consider his reply carefully.

“Funny things are.”

“Threatening the safety of everyone in the North Pole isn’t funny.”

Wow, Rudolph, real tactful, there. The reindeer immediately seemed to regret his choice of words. “No offense,” he said to Frost.

Frost’s expression was tight, and Tony thought he might actually be upset.

“It’s alright. I wouldn’t have come aboard if I couldn’t handle…” He glanced at Tony, who was sincerely surprised to suddenly realize that Frost was trying not to laugh. “…pointy things.”

Tony, delighted, twirled the probe in his fingers. “You’re tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut.”

“And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Grinch,” Rudy said sternly.

“Do you think I’m not?” He walked around Rudolph on the way to his computer case, waving the probe lightly in his face as he passed. The reindeer didn’t flinch. “Why did Nick call us in? Why has he got us looking, on Christmas Eve, for the Hourglass when we could be helping deliver presents? Why is Nick, right now, at the North Pole instead of popping down chimneys somewhere in North America?” He glanced at the decryption program Max was running, noted that it was running nicely, and fished a bottle of eggnog out of the bottom of the case. According to Cindy he was addicted to the stuff. “I can’t do the equation if I don’t have all the variables.”

Rudy was not impressed. “Are you saying there’s something he’s not telling us?”

Tony set down the eggnog temporarily. It would apparently require all of his attention to get the reindeer to understand even a simple concept. “Rudolph. The man is Santa Claus. He has to be the single most secretive person on the planet. Four and a billion people are unsure about whether or not he even exists. Of course he keeps secrets.” 

Tony picked up the bottle of eggnog and considered it. “Hey Frosty, you want to chill my eggnog?”

“There’s a fridge.”

Oh well. Tony popped it open and took a refreshing gulp. “It’s bugging him too,” he continued, gesturing at Frost. “Isn’t it?”

That got Frost to look up from his work. “Ah… I just want to finish my work here…”

“Mr. Frost?” Rudy said encouragingly. Well, that was a fine how-you-do. Pinocchio would listen to Frost but not Tony. 

Frost hesitated. “‘A present for every child.’ Loki’s jab at Nick about the Hourglass.”

“I heard it.”

Frost looked to Tony. “Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Clint didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.”

Interesting connection. Tony hadn’t thought about it.

“Grinch Tower? That big ugly…”

Excuse me? Tony didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything; the look he gave Rudolph was enough. Stuffy old Luddite…

“…building in New York?” the reindeer finished.

Frost nodded. “There’s nobody who hasn’t heard of Grinch Toys. I was in the Middle East and even I know that giveaway event tomorrow is going to be the single largest charity event of the decade.”

They were actually advertising it as the largest charity event of the century, which was still true, since the century had technically only just started a little more than a decade ago. The Grinch Toys Christmas Giveaway was taking place at the tower tomorrow morning—or today, technically—at nine am. One thousand children from all over the world had won the opportunity to fly in, gratis, and receive an exclusive Grinch gift. Close to sixty thousand children whose parents had paid an exorbitant donation would also be receiving gifts. And for every toy sold or given away, Grinch Toys would be pouring money into the Gulmira Fund. It was marketing nirvana.

“Going to be annual thing, if this first one goes well,” Tony said smugly. “I’m kind of the only name in the Christmas business that gives a damn about Third World children, is what he’s getting at.”

“So what is Nick working with the Hourglass with for when he could be trying to bring Christmas to more children?” Frost asked. “Before he had the Hourglass, Christmas still went smoothly. Why does he need it now?”

That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. “I should probably look into that, once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of the North Pole’s secure files.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Max has been running it since I got here. In an hour or so I’ll know every dirty secret the North Pole has ever tried to hide.” At least every dirty secret they’d bothered to upload into the computers. Honestly, the organization system here was a wreck. He pulled a second bottle of eggnog out of the case and set it on the counter for Rudolph. It would be amusing to see him try and open it without opposable thumbs. “Eggnog?”

Rudolph ignored it. “And you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around?”

“They don’t want me around, huh? Ask Nick sometime how much he’s offered me for my drones.” More than Nick actually had at his disposal, Tony was sure. 

“I think Loki is trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to destroy Christmas and if we don’t stay focused, he’ll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them.”

Blindly trust St. Nick? Not after that stunt he pulled when Tony tried to steal Christmas… “Following’s not really my style.”

“And you’re all about style, aren’t you?” Rudy replied, dripping with superiority.

“Says the guy whose only useful trait is flashbulb nose?” For a moment Tony thought the reindeer might actually snap, which would have been interesting, but Frost intervened.

“Rudy, tell me none of this sounds a little funky to you?”

“Just find the Hourglass.”

~o~o~

Rudy stopped in the corridor outside the lab. He didn’t want Grinch to be right, but if he was… Rudy commed Mrs. Claus. “Are the present-runs still going?”

“Yes.”

“But St. Nick’s not delivering any?”

“He’s busy.”

Rudy frowned. Might there something wrong with some of the presents?

Damn the Grinch… Rudy would have to go find out.

~o~o~

Frost thought the Grinch was slightly amusing when he was ticked. The man paced several times across the observatory before remembering his work and returning to his portable computer. Frost watched him pop open what must be his fifth bottle of eggnog. “That’s the guy my dad never shut up about? I’m wondering if they should have left him on ice.

Frost was willing to let Tony vent off some steam. It was harmless enough, although the speed with which the reindeer and the toymaker seemed to rub each other wrong was alarming. “Guy’s not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us.”

“What he’s got is an ACME dynamite kit. It’s going to blow up in his face.” Tony walked over and set down an ipad for Frost to start entering his algorithm. “And I’m going to be there when it does.”

Well, if Frost had his way, he would be a long way away from any type of explosion when things came down to it. He’d be headed back to the equator as soon as possible, to Calcutta this time, maybe. “I’ll read all about it.”

“Or you’ll be suiting up with the rest of us.”

Frost looked up sharply. Tony was inspecting his computer innocently. No, no. Frost was going to shut that idea right down. “Now you see, I don’t get a suit of armor.” Frost knew that before Bermuda he had been powerful entity, a helpful one… he might even say heroic if he counted the gig in Russia. Mostly though, he’d just been very good at his job. Now that was all gone. “I’m exposed, like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”

Though he didn’t look up from his work, Frost caught Tony stop moving out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” said the toymaker, “but I’m completely green. I’ve got some mumbo-jumbo curse that turns my skin darker and darker and raises my blood pressure every time I want something, which is every second of every day. It could give me stroke, even. But who doesn’t want something? Wealth. Power. Food, friends, sleep… Just one evening in peace with my girlfriend. I’m going to be green until the day I die. It’s part of me now. I’m not afraid to let the cameras see me, even without the armor.”

It wasn’t the same. Frost was sympathetic, sure, but it wasn’t the same. Tony didn’t hurt people. “But you can control it.”

“Because I learned how.”

“It’s different,” Frost insisted, still refusing to look away from the ipad and his work. Tony was suddenly standing next to him, hand covering the ipad. Frost had to look up. 

“Hey, I read all about your little accident. That much exposure, unshielded, to the Hourglass? Should have killed you. Not to mention that you also should have drowned.”

“So you’re saying the Abomin—” Frost caught himself. Don’t say the name. It was ironic that Tony was coming closer to setting him off now than he had with the surprise shock. “—the Other Guy, saved my life? That’s nice. A nice sentiment. Saved it for what?”

The Grinch let him have the ipad back. “Guess we’ll find out.”

“You might not enjoy that.”

“And you just might.”

~o~o~

Thor was trying to stay out of the way. It was not easy to do in the North Pole’s crowded Atrium. Elves bustled to and fro. Everyone seemed to have some useful occupation but him. Thor did not appreciate feeling so impotent, so out of place. He wandered over to a less populated area, and gazed out of a window.

He was pleased to notice Phil break away from his tasks to follow him. The Head Elf was the only person Thor knew here. “We moved Jane Foster as soon as Loki took Selvig. We’ve got a hidden storage facility off the southern tip of Chile. Very remote. She’ll be asleep the whole time. Her parents won’t notice she’s gone... She’ll be safe.”

“Thank you,” Thor said. “It’s no accident Loki taking Selvig. I dread what he plans for him once he’s done. Eric is a good elf.”

“He talked about you a lot. You changed his life. You changed everything around here.”

Thor glanced at the decimated Christmas tree still standing in the center of the Atrium. “They were better as they were. We tell ourselves, in Toyland, that we are strong, that we are superior because we keep ourselves separate from your world. But our strength depends on the Hourglass, and we come here, battling like Stubydunns—”

“Like what?” Phil asked.

“Stubydunns. You know: huge, round, made dust and grime… You don’t have those?”

“Don’t think so…”

“They are repulsive, and they corrupt everything they touch.” Thor wandered once again to the window. “When I first came to Earth, Loki’s rage followed me here, and your people paid the price. Now, again.” He gazed out the window for a star, but the North Pole was shrouded in clouds. “I had hoped the next visit I took to Earth I would see Jane, not this…”

The window Thor had been looking out through was not so much a window as a gap in the wreckage where Loki’s destruction had breached the Atrium. No one wandered near them. 

“How’s the view?” St. Nick’s voice took Thor by surprise in the isolated corner. “You think you could make Loki tell us where the Hourglass is?”

His meaning was clear. Thor was simultaneously incensed that St. Nick would ask and horrified that he was actually thinking about agreeing to it. He shook his head, turning from the night sky to Nick. “I don’t know. Loki’s mind is far afield. It’s not just power he craves, but vengeance, on me. There’s no pain that would pry this need from him.”

“A lot of people think that, before the pain starts.”

Thor’s look turned sharp. His knowledge of the man known as Santa Claus was based mostly off human myth, and it did not exactly match the grim, pragmatic leader before him. “What are you asking me to do?”

“I’m asking, what are you prepared to do?”

It was not honorable. “Loki is a prisoner.”

“Then why do I feel like he’s the only one on this boat that wants to be here?”

Suddenly Mrs. Claus was at Nick’s side. “Sir, we’ve been hacked.”

“By who? Loki?”

“The Grinch.”

Thor wondered what ‘hacked’ referred to. It sounded hostile, even though he had a feeling it didn’t have anything to do with an axe…

~o~o~

Annie watched Loki pace his cage. He wasn’t anxious, just restless, she could tell. Well, time to change that. She made the tiniest movement with her foot, shoe grating on the floor. Loki stopped, back to her.

“There’s not many people who can sneak up on me.” He sounded amused.

Annie intended to do more than sneak up on him. “But you figured I’d come.”

“After,” he said, whirling around gracefully. “After dear old Santa Claus ran out of intimidation tactics, you would appear. Innocent, sweet, unsuspicious—and I would cooperate.”

Sweet, innocent Raggedy Ann. How original. Annie got to the point. “I want to know what you’ve done to Clint.”

His lips twisted into a smirk. “I’d say I’ve expanded his mind.”

Don’t let him manipulate you, she told herself. “And once you’ve won, once you’re king of the mountain, what happens to his mind?”

“Oh, is this love, Miss Mattel?” 

Annie’s face was a wall of stone. “Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”

“Isn’t that a rather harsh attitude for a Christmas Elf?”

“I think you of all people would notice I’m not an elf.” 

He didn’t say anything, just watched her. It was obvious that if she wanted information from him she would have to give up some of her own. “Before I came to the North Pole, I...”

She paused, working to seem even more reluctant that she was. She had to keep the Toylander thinking he was in control. “Well, I made name for myself. I was very good at scaring children. I got on St. Nick’s radar in a bad way. Clint was sent to get rid of me. He made a different call.”

“And what will you do if I vow to spare him?”

Annie’s voice sharpened; Loki was enjoying this too much. “Not let you out.”

“No, but I like this. Christmas in the balance, and you bargain for one elf?”

She shrugged. “All things come to an end. I’m a toy; I’ve seen too many children grow up to weep over endings.”

“Even Clint’s?” Loki said softly. 

Stay in control. Annie’s voice crisped. “It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.”

“Can you? Can you wipe out that much red?” Loki asked. “Drakov's daughter? Sao Paulo? The hospital fire?”

Annie took half step back, an involuntary motion, but stopped herself. 

“Clint told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a single elf will change anything? Pathetic! You pretend to be a Christmas spirit, to help children—you do anything to make up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away! I won't touch Clint. Not until I make him rip out every one of your seams, every piece of red yarn, every inch of lace! And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain, you pathetic toy!”

Playing the distressed doll, Annie turned away from him. For a split second she wasn’t entirely sure she was playing. “You're a monster!” 

“Oh no, you brought the monster.”

That was it. With the delivery of her objective, Annie regained focus. It was Frost. She’d known he was dangerous from the moment she set eyes on him. “So, Frost... that's your play?”

For a moment, Annie could see Loki didn’t realize that he’d been totally owned. “What?” 

Ignoring him, she turned on her hatcomm. “Loki means to unleash the Abominable Snowman. Keep Frost in the observatory. I'm on my way. Send Thor as well.”

By the time she turned and curtseyed to Loki, he was looking less than pleased. She smiled sweetly. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

She felt his glare on her back as she headed for the observatory.

~o~o~

Nick stalked into the observatory. He looked ticked, which suited Tony just fine. He was rapidly remembering why he detested Santa Claus.

“What have you been doing, Mr. Grinch?”

“Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you.” 

“You’re supposed to be locating the Hourglass.”

Frost spoke up, voice as stern as Tony had heard it yet. He’d seen what the decryption program came up with, as well. “We are. The model is locked on the staff and we’re running the signature now. When we get a hit, we’ll have the location within a half a mile.”

“Then you get the Hourglass back—no muss, no fuss.” Tony crossed his arms. “What is Phase Two?”

~o~o~

“Phase Two is the North Pole uses the Hourglass to make toys that stop kids from growing up.”

Rudy punctuated his declaration kicking over the box of prototype toys he’d hauled up from its hiding place in the storage bay. Half a dozen dolls spilled out, looking normal enough, but every nonhuman in the room would be able to feel the magic radiating off of them.

He’d come in so quickly everyone was visibly surprised to see him. He glanced at Grinch. “Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me.”

Nick tried for damage-control immediately. “Rudolph, we gathered everything related to the Hourglass. This does not mean that we—”

“I’m sorry, Nick, what were you lying?” The Grinch spun around his giant computer case to show the room designs and diagrams of the dolls.

Rudy glared at Nick. “I was wrong, Santa Claus. The world hasn’t changed a bit.”

~o~o~

Frost shifted his attention from Santa Claus to his ragdoll helper, who had just come in the observatory, dragging Thor behind her. “Did you know about this?” he asked Annie, already suspecting the answer.

“You want to think about removing yourself from the situation, Mr. Frost?”

Oh, so now she was worried, was she? That hadn’t been her tune back in the desert. “Hey, I was in Gaza Strip. I was pretty well removed.”

“Loki is manipulating you.”

“And you’ve been doing, what, exactly?”

The doll narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t come here because I batted my eyelashes at you.”

“And I’m not going to leave because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” These people had no idea what they were dealing with. No idea about him, no idea about the Hourglass. “I want to know why the North Pole is trying to stop kids from growing up.”

Nick glanced around, apparently realizing that he would have to give some explanation, and then pointed at Thor. “Because of him.”

~o~o~

Thor was surprised. What could he possibly have to do with this laughable scheme?

St. Nick elaborated. “Last summer, Earth had a visitor from Toyland whose grudge match broke our cover to more than three hundred people. Not to mention that the loser decided the North Pole was responsible for Toyland’s overpopulation and tried to destroy us. We learned that not only are we not the only magical population here, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outmatched.”

New Mexico, then, had set this mad plan off. It was the height of ingratitude, especially after Thor had given up any chance of ever returning to Earth in order to stop Loki’s desperate attack on the North Pole. “My people want nothing but peace with the North Pole.”

“But you’re not the only people out there, are you?” Nick challenged. “What’s to stop those Elder Powers of yours from coming here? And you’re not the only threat. The world is filling up with people who can’t be controlled.” 

“Like you controlled the Hourglass?” said Rudolph.

The reindeer was absolutely right. “Your work with the Hourglass is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. You mortals can’t hope to control its power.”

~o~o~

Us mortals? St. Nick seethed. Santa Claus had been around longer than anyone here—Toy Prince included—longer than the North Pole itself, and even if he hadn’t the job for even a century yet the title deserved some respect. “You forced our hand. We had to come up with some—”

“Addictive toys,” the Grinch interrupted. “Dust them with a little bit of Hourglass sand, and the kids never grow up, never stop believing in Santa Claus. That’s what you were going for, right? More dreams means more power for the North Pole. I seem to remember someone telling me once that Christmas was meant to provide for children, and not the other way around.”

Well, that was rich, coming someone who formerly couldn’t tell a child from a dollar sign, and thought that using delivery drones to replace Christmas presents with videogame demos was an appropriate way to spend Christmas Eve. Nick did not enjoy having his own words thrown back at him. 

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Grinch?”

Rudolph was quick to agree. “I’m sure if he still made videogames, Grinch would be neck deep in—”

“Wait! Wait,” Grinch stopped him. “How is this now about me?”

“I’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

Nick was slowly becoming aware that he was losing control of the situation—if he had ever had it—when Thor distracted him.

“I thought Earth’s people were more civilized than this.”

Nick rounded on him. “Excuse me, do we come to your home and blow things up?”

Snatches of argument from the others burst in his ears like fireworks:

“Are you boys really that naïve? The North Pole monitors potential threats to children.”

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is on the threat watch?”

“Wait, you’re on that list? Are you above or below angry bees?”


	8. And the Smoke

Getting back to the North Pole was supposed to be the easy part, and technically, it was. All Clint had to do was follow the magical signal of Loki’s staff, which was strong enough to be detected despite the North Pole’s extensive concealment spell. Flying the stolen jet had been tricky, but manageable. It was getting the jet in the first place that was way more complicated than it should have been.

Clint was still thinking about it when the North Pole came into sight, despite not actually being able to remember exactly what had been so difficult. Clint had noticed he tended to forget things that Loki hadn’t specifically told him to keep track of. It was kind of inconvenient, because sometimes Clint got the feeling that there was something very important he had forgotten about Loki.

Oh well. Clint would ask Loki when he saw him in just a few minutes. For now, he had a mission to accomplish.

He signaled one of his helpers to open the rear hatch of the jet, careful not to let the wind rip him off of his feet. Bringing his bow to position, he fired a very special arrow at the roof of the electromagnet deck that sat at the apex of the North Pole, snuggled between each of the three remaining Dream Catcher engines.

When he triggered the arrow’s explosive head, the blast would funnel down through the vents, blowing out floors as it went, all the way down to the lowest Atrium level.

He had already forgotten what it was he wanted to ask Loki.

~o~o~

Tony was very sure his blood pressure was rising. He was torn between wanting to wanting to muzzle Rudolph, give Nick a piece of his mind, and throw everyone out of the observatory altogether. The argument had dissolved into a complete free-for-all; Tony was having a hard time finding a single thread of conflict to make a sarcastic remark on.

“You speak of control, yet you court chaos,” Thor said.

“What did you expect?” Frost said, the venom in his tone catching everyone’s attention. “I mean what are we, a team? No. This is like a storm cell meeting a flash cold front. We’re chaos waiting to happen.”

St. Nick took a step towards Frost. “You need to step away.”

Typical Nick. If someone disagrees, just shut them up. Tony came to Frost’s defense; he was apparently Tony’s only ally here, anyway. “Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?” he said, starting forward to intercept Nick.

“You know damn well why!” Rudolph blocked his way. “Back off.”

“Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.”

The reindeer didn’t back down. “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”

“Billionaire genius playboy philanthropist,” Tony answered without losing a beat.

“Green with envy. I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really care about is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to take the fall for someone else.”

Tony’s thoughts jumped painfully to a man in a little village called Gulmira who had once taken the fall for him. “I don’t have to fall,” he said coldly. “I can fly.”

Rudolph smirked. “Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat to children, but you better stop pretending to be their hero.”

“A hero, like you? You’re a laboratory experiment, Rudolph. Everything special about you came out of bottle.”

“Put on the suit. Let’s go a few rounds.”

~o~o~

Frost observed Grinch and Rudolph trade insults. Across from them, Annie and Nick were ganging up on Thor. It was like a hurricane.

“This is why Toyland keeps itself separate! You people are so petty.”

“You can’t honestly believe we would let Toyland have the Hourglass after—”

Frost shook his head. “Yeah, this is a team.”

As usual, everyone’s radar pinged. It was incredible how people could be so finely attuned to his voice and still not listen to a word he said. St. Nick was eyeing him like he was some kind of bomb.

“Mattel, would you escort Mr. Frost back to his—”

“Where? You rented my room.” 

Frost waited half a second for the inevitable denial.

“The cage was just in case—”

“You needed to kill me. But you can’t.” Frost didn’t stop to watch the others’ reactions. He was done caring about how much he scared these people. They obviously weren’t scared enough. Nick should know better. Fire hadn’t done the trick the first time, magic hadn’t stopped the Other Guy the second time, and dropping him in a glass box wouldn’t do it this time. Nothing would do it. “I know. I tried.” 

Well, everyone was listening now, were they? Even St. Nick looked shocked, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that Frost could possibly understand—that Frost didn’t blame for the assassination attempts but for the fact that they always caused human casualties.

“I got low. I didn’t see an end so I got hold of one those human guns and put a bullet in my mouth. The Other Guy spat it back out.” His voice didn’t tremble at all. Instead it was crisp—cool and getting colder. “So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good. Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.”

His gaze settled on Annie. His veins were turning to ice. He could feel the cold creeping up his neck and felt the old familiar euphoria teasing him, begging to be let out. The temperature in the room dropped. He resisted the urge to laugh. “You want to know my secret, Miss Mattel? You want to know how I stay calm?”

The doll stared at him with wide eyes. It was disturbingly satisfying.

“Mr. Frost” Rudy said. “Put down the staff.”

Frost suddenly became aware he was gripping something—Loki’s staff—tight enough to whiten his knuckles. The more vicious part of him howled at the turn of events as Frost realized Annie must have been right about Loki. The temperature stopped dropping but did not rise to its former level.

How close had he come to losing it?

Grinch’s computer began ringing urgently. “We got it,” said Tony, breaking the silence.

Frost set the staff down, resisting the urge to crush it with ice. “Sorry kids, you don’t get to see my party trick.”

As he headed over to the computer the room erupted into argument again. Frost tried unsuccessfully to tune it out.

“I could get there fastest.”

“The Hourglass belongs on the Island of Lost Toys. No one here is a match for it.”

“You’re not going alone.”

“You gonna stop me?”

“Put on the suit, let’s find out.”

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.”

“Put on the suit.”

Frost was having trouble navigating Tony’s computer screen—his fingers had become so cold the touch screen refused to pick them up. He eventually managed to get the location on screen.

Grinch Tower. 

It was six am in New York; the giveaway would start in three hours, and Loki would be there, along with sixty thousand children.

“Oh my god…”

~o~o~

Rudy had his feet knocked out from under him as the entire room—the entire North Pole, it felt like—shuddered violently. Flames burst from every ventilation screen on the inner wall; Rudy heard a crunch as the floor sagged and collapsed into the level below. Smoke was everywhere. Grinch was closest to him, flat on his back and groaning. Rudy couldn’t see anyone else. 

Three things were obvious: They were under attack. It was probably Loki. They needed to get out of this room before it decided to collapse further.  
Grinch rolled over and Rudy caught his eye. The man may have been a genius, but he was also only human. Another explosion would not be good for him without his armor; nor would he be any use without it. “Put on the suit.”

“Yeah.” Grinch’s voice was tight as he struggled to get his footing on the still trembling floor. Rudy slipped an antler under his arm and hoisted him up.

~o~o~

Maria only kept her footing because the Atrium didn’t shake as severely as the rest of the North Pole. She had, in fact, been lifted several inches off the ground as the Dream Catcher engines—all three working ones—momentarily failed, causing the whole North Pole to drop jarringly. If they pulled through this Christmas, Maria intended to spend the next year installing shielding on the Dream Catchers and their engines. Spells, technology, everything.

St. Nick was on her hatcomm almost immediately. “Maria!”

“It was the Dream Catchers again. All the engines were down. We were free-falling for about four seconds.” 

Maria took the nearest entrance to the stairway and ran up to engine supervision. She kept her hatcomm on speaker for Nick and seized the nearest engineering technician. “Engine report now!”

“The engines are back online but we lost the electromagnet system. It could be possible to reboot it but not while we’re in the air.”

“With DC4 gone, we won’t be for long.” The electromagnet was the back-up levitation force that they’d been relying on with DC4 down. Normally it kept them fixed above the magnetic North Pole. She switched to the emergency open hatcomm channel. “Somebody’s got to get outside and reboot the electromagnet before we drift off out of position.”

“Grinch, you copy that?” Nick said, voice slightly distorted.

“I’m on it.”

Nick continued. “Maria, my hatcomm is fritzing. Get Phil to lockdown—zzh—cage. I’m on the way to the Atrium now. And get hold of Mattel and—zzhhzz.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, in case he could hear her. “Annie? Report.”

~o~o~

Annie hit the ground the ground hard, covering her head to shield it from the falling debris. Something heavy pressed down on her feet. She was worried for a moment the floor would give out and she would fall through yet another level, but eventually the chaos calmed. Her feet were stuck but she was otherwise okay. She caught sight of Frost out of the corner of her eye; if she twisted she could see him better…

“Annie? Report.”

“We’re okay,” she said into her hatcomm breathlessly. She shivered and realized suddenly that it was very cold. She took a closer look at her surroundings.

There was not a single piece of debris touching her. It was all suspended a few feet above by misshapen mounds of ice, including a very heavy support beam that would almost certainly have crushed her and Frost both. The ice had saved her life, but it was also what was pinning her down: her feet were surrounded by ice from one of mounds holding up the support beam.

As she watched, the floor began to ice over. Annie could see her breath. She twisted around to look at Frost, merely feet away. He was flat on his back, watching the spreading ice with wide eyes.

“We’re okay, right?”

His hands were shaking. He didn’t seem to notice her. “Oh no, no, no, no, no…” He repeated it like a prayer until he ran out of breath. Suddenly he laughed, a breathless, desperate laugh, like drowning person when they can finally breathe again. It made a chill crawl down Annie’s neck. “Oh, I can’t win for losing.”

He groaned, clenching his fists, and all the ice Annie could see grew thicker. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore. “Oh, please no…” Frost muttered, his hair beginning to ice over.

Annie couldn’t look away. It was horrifying and fascinating. “Frost?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to groan and tremble erratically. 

“Jack. You gotta fight it. This is just what Loki wants.”

The mounds began to look less like mounds and more like porcupines; it seemed like every surface was sharpening. Annie caught a reflection in one of them and turned to see two elves coming to investigate. She shook her head violently, hoping Frost hadn’t noticed. If he thought he might be attacked, he would surely lose it. Get back, she mouthed. They retreated.

Annie turned back to Frost. “We’re going to be okay.” She schooled her voice into a reassuring tone, like this just any old mission. Glancing downwards she noticed that the ice was forcing its way into the cracks between wooden floorboards. If Frost put much more pressure on them they would give way completely. “Jack, you got to stay in control.”

Frost laughed again. Looking back at him, she saw that ice had covered both of his fists, was creeping up his arms, growing thicker by the second. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked, voice dancing on the line between his normal tone and something else. Something gleeful, sinister.

“No.” She’d never lied more in her life. “We’re going to be okay, alright? I swear will get you out of this. I’m not afraid of—”

“Ha!” The ice broke the floorboards.

Annie was ready, and she twisted in the air to land on her feet, immediately rolling out of the way of the falling debris. Once in the clear, she looked for Frost. He was on his hands and knees in the wreckage of three different fallen floors. Already it was icing over in jagged spikes and rough whorls.

“Jack?”

He looked up and their eyes locked. For a moment, Annie saw something very human flicker in his eyes—an apology, it felt like. Then it was gone and Frost with it.

“You should be.” 

The room exploded with a cold blast of ice and snow. Wind whipped from nowhere in a miniature hurricane. Every surface glistened with sharp ridges and icicles. In the center was the Abominable Snowman, and huge humanoid monster made completely of ice. If Frost was somewhere within it, he was completely hidden.

Annie ran. The Snowmonster charged after her, and she couldn’t tell if it was roaring or cackling.

~o~o~

Clint jumped out of the jet and looked around the abandoned wreckage of DC4, where they had landed. He selected several of his helpers and pointed upwards to the electromagnet installation several levels above. “Keep the electromagnet down.” 

The rest he kept with him. “Atrium first, then the cage. Follow my lead.”

A roar sounded faintly from below. Clint felt the North Pole shake, and grinned. “Try to stay out of the way of the hurricane.”

~o~o~

Tony was impressed. Old Frosty had the worst timing ever, but he certainly put on a first-rate hurricane. 

Tony was flying through what used to be a ventilation channel before the explosion and was now a gaping hole large enough for a man-sized flying suit to fit through. Every few moments the whole structure would shake and Tony would scrape against one of the walls. 

His HUD showed that Rudy was hailing him through the hatcomm system. “Grinch. I’m here. Where are you?”

“On my way.” He flew as fast as he could and still let Max get sufficient scans for the damage reports. Presently he broke through the top of the tunnel and joined Rudolph in the air above the electromagnet. It was a standard magnetic turbine in a copper-alloy coil, maybe four hundred feet across. The classic sixth grade science experiment taken up to the max: magnetic rotors spun inside the coil to create an electric current in the copper that was cross-linked—here was where the mechanics got interesting—back to the magnet to form a powerful electromagnetic field. Add the natural magnetic fluctuation from the Earth’s north pole and the result was a machine that doubled as a levitator and a tether.

—that is, it would be if most of the central control unit hadn’t been blown apart and fallen down into the rotors. Tony surveyed the mess and checked Max’s scans. “We have to get the superconducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris.”

“And that means…?” Rudolph asked.

Tony pointed to the remains of the structure that had housed the central control unit. “If it’s still there, there’s a control panel up on that spire. I need you to get there and see which relays are in overload position.”

Tony dropped down and flew back into the nearest vent, intent on clearing his way through to the area underneath the rotor. He had to blast a few pieces of debris out of his way.

“The wind is picking up out here,” Rudolph said on his hatcomm.

Tony’s thoughts jumped to Frost. If the man started a blizzard, it could blow the whole structure out of line with the magnetic north pole, and then it wouldn’t matter if they fixed the electromagnet or not. They had to hurry. 

“Well, don’t blow away,” he said. “What’s it look like in there?” 

There was a long pause. “It appears to run on some form of electricity,” Rudy said dryly.

Oh, this was going to be harder than Tony thought. Of course the reindeer would have no knowledge of modern mechanics. “Um… You’re not wrong.”

Tony instructed Rudolph in the mechanics of fixing the control panel relays with more patience than he knew he had, while simultaneously blasting his way to the turbine.

“Okay, the relays are intact. What’s our next move?”

Tony looked up at the damage as he hovered underneath the rotor. “Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won’t re-engage without a jump. I’m going to have to get in there and push.”

“Well if that thing gets up to speed you’ll get shredded.”

Wrong. Honestly, five minutes of technical training and the reindeer thought he was an expert. Even if Tony wouldn’t be able to get out of the turbine the way he went in, the suit would fit through the outer… Oh, crap. They had a very big problem here.

“The rotors are not the problem,” Tony said. “I’m small enough to fall out of the exterior vents. The problem is that this is an electromagnet. If I’m still in range when the standard control unit starts generating a hyperbolic magnetic flux again, the EMP will—”

“Speak English.”

Tony huffed. “Once the machine starts running on its own it will shut down my suit.”

Meaning that once the rotors got up to speed, Tony would find himself sixty thousand feet in the air with no way to fly.

“Then I’ll get in and push.”

“You don’t have the firepower, gramps.” There was an obvious solution here, but Tony didn’t like it one bit.

“So we find another plan.”

“There’s not enough time for another plan. We wait much longer and either the whole thing will fall or Frost’s tantrum will blow us off of the magnetic north pole.” Tony sighed. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to do this. It was definitely not one of his better plans. 

“You’re going to have to catch me.”

~o~o~

The Abominable Snowman was stalking her.

Annie supposed it was technically a good thing that the Snowmonster was not just mindlessly destroying the North Pole and its inhabitants but rather was fixating its wrath on a particular object. She just wished that she wasn’t that object.

Annie stayed as silent as possible as she crept down an outer access-stairway. The lights were down in this section and she kept her hand on the wall to guide her. When it ran into a patch of ice, she stopped moving. The Snowmonster was close, perhaps just on the other side of the wall…

Just above her head the wall burst inward as the Snowmonster forced a huge icy fist into the stairwell. Annie sprinted down the stairs, trying to get away.

She could hear the walls crumbling as the Snowmonster followed her. Ice formed under Annie’s feet, making her footing more and more precariously until the entire staircase became one slick slide. Annie fell down and slid, faster and faster, all the way down the stairway. Her momentum kept her going at the bottom and she slammed heavily into the far wall of the stairwell.

She was dazed for several seconds, and by the time she tried to get up the floor was completely covered in slippery ice. She kept falling down despite her desperate attempts to find some leverage.

The Snowmonster arrived, and glared at her menacingly. Spikes of ice grew up out of the floor around her. Annie realized she was going to die.  
The nearest wall burst in and Thor barreled through, slamming straight into the Snowmonster and pushing him through the opposite wall.  
Annie didn’t move even after they disappeared.

~o~o~

Thor had gone looking for the Abominable Snowman as soon as he heard that Frost had let it out. If the legends of its strength were true, then Thor was probably the only person in the North Pole that could best him.

About thirty seconds after tackling the Snowmonster, Thor revised that conclusion. He was probably the only person in the North Pole who could match the Abominable Snowman. Besting the creature would be an entirely different game.

People in the Loading Bay fled as Thor and his opponent approached. Thor kept his eyes on the Snowmonster and stayed light on his feet. He avoided a few swings from the monster’s massive fists and then ducked in close for one of his own, a strong blow that would have leveled any normal warrior. It didn’t faze the Snowmonster. 

Thor ran into an obstacle as he tried to edge to the left and realized that it was a thick vertical spike of ice. In another instant, one had sprung up on his other side. They grew rapidly thicker, and he braced an arm against each to keep them from squishing him. His strength cracked the ice, but it reformed, stronger and thicker.

“We are not your enemies, Frost! Try to think.”

His answer was a punch that sent him flying across the Loading Bay. Thor rolled up to a crouch and held out his hand, mentally summoning his hammer. It wasn’t far, but neither was the Snowmonster. Thor could hear the pounding of its feet and feel the atmosphere grow unbearably cold as it got close. His hammer was coming. The Snowmonster roared at him.

The hammer arrived in the nick of time for Thor to spring up and swing it into the Snowmonster’s face. The ice shattered, pieces flying off in every direction, but it reformed immediately. The blow flung the Snowmonster back into a twenty-foot storage shelf. Boxes and containers of toys showered downwards, freezing as they fell. The creature turned and ripped one of the planks of shelving from the wall. It hurled the shelf at Thor. Needle-sharp spikes formed on it as it approached.

Thor ducked, throwing his hammer at the Snowmonster as he rose. The monster seized it by the handle, but the hammer did not deem the creature worthy and its momentum carried the Snowmonster through several shelves and across the room. Thor followed after, using the monster’s distraction to land a heavy kick to its face before reclaiming his hammer. Before it could recover, he swung a huge uppercut, knocking the creature backwards. Unfortunately, the floor was slick with ice, and Thor lost his own footing. The combined impact of both of them and Thor’s hammer was too much for the floor and it collapsed, dropping them onto the landing pad.

~o~o~

Nick strode onto the bridge, snatching the hat off of first elf to walk past him. It was too small for him, so he put the hatcomm on speaker and stuffed it in his pocket. Reports came flooding in. Contacting the engineering supervisor, he ordered: “Take us to the ground, now. I don’t want to fall any further than necessary.”

Then he sought out Maria. “We need a full evac on the lower Loading Bay.”

Maria nodded sharply and headed for the exit. Suddenly, she shouted. “Grenade!”

Instincts Nick hadn’t used in decades leapt into action as he ducked out of the way, shielding his face. In his peripheral vision he saw Maria get blown back by a powerful explosion of tranq dust. All around him, anyone who got even a puff of the tranq dust in the face dropped instantly. Nick liberated a tranq gun from the nearest sleeping elf and hunkered down behind a control panel. 

As the tranq dust cleared, various armed toys piled into the room. Nick took them by surprise, taking down six or seven before his gun ran out of ammunition. One remained, and it knew where he was now. Nick was trapped.

A shot from his left took out the toy. Nick glanced over, relieved to find out that Maria was still conscious—and armed. They took cover behind the Atrium Tree as more intruders hovered by the entrance; a handful of elves who had avoided the tranq grenade joined them.

“Sir, I’ve got reports coming in from the launch pad,” said one elf. “Thor and the Abominable Snowman have moved again. They say we’ve got a full scale blizzard building up outside.”

Maria glanced at him. “Nick, Frost will tear this place apart.”

“Get his attention.” Nick sent another shot at the intruders.

Maria addressed her hatcomm. “Loading squad 4, launch the sleigh, now.” She listened for a moment. “Leave the presents. Get that sleigh in the air, get Frost’s attention, set the autopilot to take it the hell away from here, and then get out as fast as you can.”


	9. It Flew Like a Flash

“You know, this was way less fun than busting up drones,” Tony told Max as he weaved around the electromagnet’s rotor blades and cleared the wreckage of the control spire from their path. “This thing is the most awful piece of engineering I’ve ever seen. If I’d designed it there’d be about six more fail safes.” 

“Well, sir, St. Nick did request your input on the North Pole’s levitating technology last—”

Tony cut his AI off. “Yeah, I know. Whatever.” He remembered Nick’s various attempts to get him to contribute his genius to the North Pole, but Tony had always refused. The Grinch did not work with Santa Claus. Period.

Rotors cleared, Tony flew into position behind one, near the turbine’s rim in order to get more momentum. “Alright, time to take first place at the science fair.” He hailed Rudolph. “You ready for me, goalie?”

With Rudolph’s affirmative, Tony started pushing, his suit whining slightly at the resistance. The rotor began to move, slowly at first, and then faster. Soon enough it would start generating a current.

“Grinch, you’d better finish as fast as you can. I can barely keep in one spot out here. The wind—” The reindeer cut off.

“Rudolph?” Tony said after a moment. Please don’t let the guy bail on him now. The rotors were moving already, the blizzard was getting worse, and Tony was pretty sure he’d noticed the North Pole begin to list downwards. There was no time to stop and go find Rudolph. “Hey! Where are you?”

~o~o~

Rudy was trying to keep himself more or less centered over the electromagnet, keeping a careful eye on the Grinch when he could see him through the rotor blades, but it was very difficult to do with the blowing wind and snow. Rudy had flown through storms before, of course, even led Santa’s sleigh through them, but flying was motion. It was always easier than just hovering in the air. So things were already difficult enough when Rudy spotted a band of armed toys preparing to launch another explosive from one of the Dream Catcher towers. He stopped talking to Grinch, mid-sentence, and dove towards the grenade, knocking it away into the blizzard surrounding the North Pole.

The attackers replied with a barrage of tranq gun fire. Rudy swerved and prepared to come at them from above, too focused on evading shots that, at this height, would be deadly, to answer Grinch’s increasingly frantic hails.

~o~o~

Thor winced as he took yet another staggering blow from the Snowmonster—or more correctly, the Snowmonster used him to deal a staggering blow to a nearby wall. As much as he hated to admit it, Thor was tiring. He had succeeded in keeping the Snowmonster from expressing its rage on the North Pole and its inhabitants, but Thor had made no headway in subduing thing. He had slipped on ice more times than he could count and could barely feel his cold fingers anymore.

Thor used his leverage with the wall to sling the Snowmonster across the landing pad, and then scrambled to his feet, summoning Mjolnir. They were on the landing pad, exposed to the open air—perhaps a bit of lightning would slow this monster down.

“Hey! Toylander!” Thor glanced behind him towards the shout. A half dozen elves were crawling all over Santa Claus’s sleigh; one was hailing him. 

“Duck!”

Duck? Thor frowned, momentarily distracted. Why would the elf be calling his attention to a fowl when they were all in peril from the—

Something came flying at his head from the direction of the sleigh; Thor dropped to the floor to evade it. Tracking its path through the air, he watched it collide heavily with the Snowmonster and explode, loudly, into dozens of colorful sparks. ‘Duck’ evidently meant something much different here than what Thor was accustomed to. He turned back to the sleigh. 

“We got its attention!” another elf cheered. 

The Snowmonster roared at them from across the landing pad; the blizzard surrounding them intensified. 

“Yeah, and now it’s angry!” yelled the first elf. “It’s really angry!”

Thor rolled to his feet and sprinted to the sleigh. All the elves were climbing out of it except the first one, who was frantically punching a number of buttons inside it. The sleigh lifted off of the landing pad, hovering a few inches in the air, causing its bells to jingle merrily. The other elves tugged at Thor. “Get out of here! It’s gotta chase the sleigh, not you!”

Thor retreated from the sleigh as it began to move across the landing pad, picking up speed. The Snowmonster roared once more, and chased after it. Sleigh and beast shot towards the edge of the landing pad.

At the last moment, the remaining elf jumped out of the sleigh and caught the edge of the landing pad. Thor rushed forward and snatched him off the edge. The tiny thing was blue from the cold but otherwise quite fine.

The elf’s teeth chattered as it tapped its hat and communicated with its superiors. “Th—th—this is Sitwell. The sleigh is launched. W-w-with any luck the Snowmonster will chase it all the way to Greenland.” The elf was silent a moment. “Yes, sir. He’s here.” Sitwell glanced up at Thor. “St. Nick w-w-wants you to go guard the prisoner.”

Loki. This all could only be his doing. Thor took off towards the stairway.

~o~o~

“Thor’s on his way to the detention level now,” Maria reported as Nick took another shot at their evasive attackers. “Phil ran into some trouble on level six, but he’s heading that way, too.”

Nick nodded. He, Maria and any elves still conscious were holding off the enemy toys from behind the Atrium Tree. Every few moments one would duck out from its cover beyond the entrance and try to head for the control panels. Each time, they were forced back with tranq shots. Unfortunately, the defenders were also trapped, since the only cover in the room was the Atrium Tree.

Suddenly, that cover exploded. Branches, tinsel and pine needles rained down on Nick and the others; he rolled away from the worst of it and scanned the ceiling, hoping his suspicions would not be confirmed

He wasn’t that lucky. A suspension line was hooked onto the bottom of his workshop, and hanging from it was the only elf that could manage to pull off an attack this crazy: Clint. 

Even as Nick was bringing up his tranq gun to fire at the rogue elf, Clint shot an arrow into their midst. Nick held his breath and covered his face as it exploded, determined not to breathe any in. By the time he looked up, Clint was gone.

“Sir, the others are retreating,” said one elf, motioning to the entrance where their attackers were pulling back. Nick scowled.

“I’d hardly call it retreating. See what they broke. Fix it.”

~o~o~

Annie hadn’t moved. She sat, huddled on the ice-covered floor of the stairwell like a broken puppet, her strings cut. She listened to the flurried, frenzied reports jumping back and forth on the comms. An attack one the Atrium. A blizzard. Grinch had lost contact with Rudolph. The Snowmonster was on the landing pad with Thor. They were losing altitude. The Snowmonster was gone.

“It’s Clint. He took out our computer systems. He’s headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?”

No one would copy. They were all busy. Annie knew; she’d been doing nothing but listen. Listen and remember how to breathe.

Then the name registered. Clint.

Annie spoke, voice less shaky than she expected it to be. “This is Mattel. I copy.”

~o~o~

It was unmistakable now—the North Pole was falling. Tony upped the power on his thrusters, forcing the rotors to pick up speed. He tried hailing Rudolph again.

The answer was not Rudolph but Nick. “Grinch, we’re losing altitude.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” It could have been something wrong with the other engines, or Frost’s blizzard, but Tony’s HUD told him that they were at least still in line with the magnetic pole. The electromagnet would still work, once the rotors got up to speed. Which, unfortunately for Tony, would happen in the next ninety seconds. “Rudolph! Answer your damn comms!”

~o~o~

Annie caught up with Clint in the storage bays. The lights were down, no doubt frozen over and shorted out. Annie stalked Clint silently, like a child on one of her recon missions, but he was as well-trained as she was, and he heard her. She saw the exact moment that he heard her, in the tensing of his neck and the weight-shift in his feet.

Annie wasn’t prepared for the absolute strangeness of his eyes, for how he didn’t recognize her at all, and her hesitation got her a blow to the face with Clint’s bow.

Keep focused. She could fix him later, but right now she just needed to put him down.

Annie seized the bow and turned it against Clint, twisting his arm and sending him rocking into a storage shelf. Plastic bows tumbled down on them both. Clint dropped to the floor and swung his legs to trip her, but she jumped over them, clinging to the shelf next to her and using it to propel herself downwards on top of him. The force behind the kick could have ended the fight right there but he rolled away before she landed. His arms wrapped around her neck.

Annie tucked her chin down to stop Clint from choking her and reached a hand over her head to rip a tranq arrow out of Clint’s quiver. He caught her wrist with one hand and forced the arrow downward, towards her chest. Annie strained against his weight. Her feet was sliding underneath her.

Having a sudden idea, she tipped her whole body forward, letting Clint flip over her shoulder and fall, headfirst, on the floor. the impact made a satisfying smacking sound, and Clint didn’t move for a moment. Annie eyed him suspiciously.

Then he groaned, and opened his eyes. The strange look was gone, replaced with recognition. 

“Annie?”

Annie snapped the head off of the tranq arrow and let the dust fall in Clint’s face. He fell asleep instantly. Better safe than sorry.

~o~o~

Thor saw the cage doors open just as he entered the room. Determined not to lose Loki again, he charged forward. “No!”

His yell was cut short as he overshot—through Loki—and fell into the cage. Another one of Loki’s blasted illusions. The doors closed on Thor before he could get up. He glared through the heavy glass at his brother, who had regained his staff and was watching Thor with disdain. A few feet away, a nasty-looking toy stood at attention, evidently the instrument of Loki’s escape.

“Are you ever not going to fall for that?” Loki asked.

Thor felt anger bubble inside of him. This was no game! This was not some opportunity for Loki to show off his magic tricks. He raised his hammer, thankful he had it with him, and swung at the cage door.

The glass chipped slightly but did not give. Instead, the clamps holding the sides of the cage loosened slightly; the floor dropped several inches and Thor froze, remembering too well St. Nick’s demonstration of the mechanism. 

Loki gestured sharply at his toy accomplice. “Get the jet ready.” The toy nodded and struck off into the corridor. Loki smirked at Thor. “The earthlings think us immortal. Shall we test that?”

Thor gripped his hammer tightly. The only thing he could do was reason with Loki, and the look in his brother’s eyes was proof enough that he would not listen to reason. Loki approached the control panel and flipped open the cover. His fingers hovered over the buttons; Thor’s gaze was riveted on them.

“Move away, please.”

It was Phil. He was holding the largest tranq gun Thor could remember seeing. It rivaled even a human gun. Despite the fact that it must be incredibly heavy, the elf pointed it coolly, easily, at Loki. Thor couldn’t help but smile slightly at the remarkable elf’s unflappable confidence.

Loki moved away from the control panel.

“You see this? We started working on the prototype after the New Mexico incident, since the tranqs don’t do much for you folks. Even I don’t know what it does.” He flipped some switch and the gun whined, powering on. Green and red lights flickered along its barrel. “Do you want to find out?”

Thor saw the telltale flicker a moment before it happened. Loki appeared, just behind Phil, at the exact moment his illusion near the control panel disappeared. The elf was quick; he whirled around part way before Loki’s staff slammed into his chest, flashing with deadly magic. Phil staggered back into the wall.

“No!” Thor slammed against the glass, too distressed to care that the clamps loosened even further at the impact. No. Not Phil.

Phil slumped to the ground, barely holding onto the gun. His skin was yellowing; he was growing older with each passing second. His uniform and hat faded in color until both reached a dull gray color. Thor couldn’t believe it. Thor didn’t want to believe it.

He watched Loki walk past his victim and over to the control panel. His expression was as cool as Thor’s glare was hot. No words were spoken.  
Loki hit the button.

The detainment room disappeared as the cage dropped through the floor. Thor felt himself fall backwards as the tube tipped, buffeted by the hurricane-winds. He lost his grasp on Mjolnir as he slammed into the glass wall. All he could see through it were streaks of white and black, the sky and the snow, rushing together as the cage spun. Thor focused his gaze inside the cage, reaching for his hammer. He had to get out before the cage hit the miles-thick ice far below. Thor may have been a Toylander and nearly indestructible, but his experience in New Mexico had left him with a very clear grasp of his own mortality.

Finally he felt his fingers wrap solidly around Mjolnir’s handle. Thor twisted as the cage fell, lining himself up across from the chip in the glass door. It would be the weakest spot. The ground was approaching rapidly.

Thor launched himself towards the crack and felt the glass give with a horrific cracking sound. As he broke free, the cold outside the cage hit him with such intensity he let go of his hammer once more. An instant later he hit the ice. 

~o~o~

Loki found he did not enjoy the idae of having vanquished Thor as much as he wanted to. What was particularly frustrating was that he didn’t know why. The anguish in Thor’s eyes had been priceless, and Loki considered it an especially good stroke of fortune that the idiot elf had stumbled into the situation. The cage may even manage to kill Thor, or at least incapacitate him indefinitely. It should have been very satisfying. Loki frowned, gripping his staff tightly. It didn’t matter. Loki had things to attend to.

“You’re going to lose.”

It was the elf. Was the pathetic thing still alive? Loki guessed that he had not used quite as much force as he ought to have with the staff. He faced the elf, planning to rectify that immediately. “Am I?”

The elf was slumped against the wall, aging rapidly under the effects of the staff’s enhanced magic. He’d probably dissolve in a matter of minutes. It was a wonder he was still speaking.

“It’s in your nature.”

Loki snorted. “Your heroes are scattered. Your presents are undelivered. Your floating toy-factory falls from the sky. Where, exactly is my disadvantage?”

The elf’s voice rasped like paper in a hundred year old book. “You lack conviction.”

Loki scowled. Who was this insignificant creature to pretend to know him? It was nonsense. It was a lie. It had to be. “I don’t think I—”

Something white-hot hit him solidly in the stomach and Loki’s thoughts scattered as he slammed through the wall behind him. Groaning, Loki staggered to his feet. Forget it. The death of some fool elf couldn’t possibly matter anyway.

~o~o~

The attackers had kept Rudy busy, never abandoning their position even when the North Pole began to fall out of the sky in earnest and the blizzard reached blinding proportions. Deflecting their explosives had been like picking needles out of the haystack while ice-skating. Now that the blizzard was receding—thank God—Rudy had the upper hand again.

He ducked and dodged the toys’ shots and drove them further and further back in the tower, chasing them down the steps. They seemed very suddenly eager to retreat, Rudy noted with satisfaction.

“Rudolph, for Christmas’s sake, answer me!”

Rudy turned on his comms. It was the first time he’d had enough extra breath to do so. “Grinch, give me a minute. There’s a pack of toys up here with grenades trying to blow the rotors up again.”

“The magnet is coming back on! I’m going to shut down, you idiot! You had better catch—zzh”

Rudy shot back up out of the tower. He zipped back and forth over the electromagnet turbine, looking for the telltale light of the Grinch’s suit. Would there still be a light? The rotors were going much faster than they had been when he last looked. 

There! A lightning-fast speck popped out of one of the side vent and ricocheted outwards into the sky. Rudy dove, pushing as fast as he could to catch up with Grinch. The man was flailing wildly; Rudy hooked an antler under one arm and felt the other latch onto him for dear life. The sudden increase in weight was hard to compensate for and they continued to drop. Grinch was a lot bigger than an elf. Rudy pulled up with all of his might, headed for the North Pole, already far above them. His muscles burned and the cold air seemed to hold no oxygen at all.

They barely made it to the landing pad. Rudy sank to his knees, panting. Grinch scrambled up onto his knees and ripped of his helmet. His face was the most brilliant shade of green Rudy had ever seen, though it was rapidly fading to its normal hue. The man gasped for breath, clutching at his armored chest with one hand and supporting himself with the other.

“You alright?”

“Blood pressure,” Grinch gasped. His breathing began to even out as his coloring returned to normal. “Spikes with the color.”

Rudy arched an eyebrow. What could he possibly be envying right now? “What did you want?”

Grinch gave him a withering look. “For Rudolph the Responsible Reindeer to be there to catch me like he said he would. What part of ‘Don’t wander off’ did you not understand?” 

Rudy glanced away. “I caught you, didn’t I?”

~o~o~

Nick would have had it be anyone but Phil. Himself, Maria, anyone. Nick barely had eyes for the missing cage and escaped Toylander as he knelt next to the elf.

“Medical team to detention room.” His voice was tight.

Phil looked a couple hundred years old. His skin stretched around his bones. His eyes were dark and sunken, half closed. His breaths rattled, and came far too infrequently. One of the New Mexico prototypes lay next to him, still smoking.

“I’m sorry, boss,” Phil rasped. “The toy rabbited.”

Always a professional, Nick thought. “Just stay awake.” He tapped the elf’s shoulder to keep him focused. “Eyes on me.”

“I think I’m clocking out early this year.”

Nick shook his head, jaw clenched. The elf was turning a deathly gray. “Not an option. Christmas isn’t over yet.”

“Merry Christmas, boss.” The elf took a long, painful breath. It had an air of finality to it. “It’s worth it, really. This was never going to work if they didn’t have their own…”

The elf faded out, last word unsaid: angel.

Nick’s hand still rested on the elf’s shoulder. After a moment he felt it give and pulled back. Just like everything Loki’s staff touched, the elf’s body was dissolving. Nick backed away, chilled by the sight.

His voice betrayed no emotion as he turned on his comm. “Head Elf Phil is down.”

Several replies reached him at once. Maria’s voice sifted to the top. “A medical team is on its way.”

“They’re here. There’s nothing left.”


	10. Tarnished with Ashes and Soot

Rudy didn’t say a word to Grinch after Nick announced Phil’s death. They both silently made their way to the Atrium. Rudy took the long way around, to avoid the snow and ice left behind by Frost, but if Grinch noticed he didn’t say anything. The North Pole’s workers bustled all around, chattering into their hatcomms and clearing debris out of the hallways. They entered the Atrium, where numerous elves in masks where carefully sweeping up spilled tranq dust and Nick was glaring with less than usual severity at the mess.

“We lose Loki, sir?” Rudy asked.

St. Nick snorted. “Yes. Just about everything else too. Is that job on the electromagnet solid or do we have to continue repairs?”

Grinch didn’t get to answer, because at that moment the intercom system turned on.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,  
And never thought upon?

Mrs. Claus looked up from a group of elves she’d been harassing. “Who turned that on? Who turned on the intercom?”

Her only reply was the song. In fact, everyone in the room had stopped their work. They stood still and listened solemnly, respectfully.

The flames of Life and Love extinguished,  
A friendship past and gone.

Rudy had heard this version of the song before. During the war, it was always played whenever they lost someone to Krampus’s attacks. Apparently the tradition had continued.

For auld lang syne, my friends,  
For auld lang syne.  
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,  
For the sake of auld lang syne.

St. Nick said nothing, gave no notice that he even heard the melody save that he’d stopped barking orders to everyone. Next to Rudy, Grinch fidgeted.

But now you must go your way, friend,  
And now I must go mine.  
We’ve wandered many a weary way  
Since the days of auld lang syne.

They’d played it for Bucky, back in the day, and probably for him, too, Rudy supposed. Peggy would’ve made sure they played it for him. Now they were playing it for Phil.

For auld lang syne, my friends,  
For auld lang syne.  
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,  
For the sake of auld lang syne.

The song ended simply, without any flourishes, and the intercom shut off. The elves in the room filed out, talking softly into their hatcomms and lugging bags of spilled tranq dust. When they were gone, Nick pierced Rudy and Grinch with a solemn look. Rudy glanced down in response, eyeing the shattered remains of some Christmas bulb near his feet.

“We’re dead in the air up here. The Hourglass, the presents, even our spare sleigh is gone. I got nothing for you.” Nick sighed. “Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming.”

Rudy was surprised to hear the admission of fault, but didn’t look up as St. Nick continued.

“The world is falling apart these days. Even people who do believe in Christmas are hard pressed to see it around them. So yes, we were building enchanted toys with the Hourglass. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier.” Nick paused. Rudy still didn’t look away from the shattered glass shell on the ground. “There was an idea, and Grinch knows this, called the Angels Initiative.”

Rudy glanced sideways, at Grinch, who was once again turning a remarkable shade of emerald. His fingers toyed frantically with the edges of his coat.

“The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, people with some special connection to Christmas, to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together to bring the Christmas spirit to those who needed it, even when Santa Claus couldn’t. To be Christmas Angels.”

Angels? Them? Rudy repressed a snort. They had all done nothing but antagonize each other—even himself, Rudy knew. He shouldn’t have let Grinch get to him… Frost had been right. They weren’t a team; they were hardy more cohesive than the shattered ornament at his feet.

“Phil died still believing in that idea. In heroes.”

Rudy looked up without meaning to. Nick was looking at Grinch, who abruptly turned away and left the room. St. Nick’s gaze slid from the door back to Rudy.

“Well, it’s an old fashioned notion.”

~o~o~

Thor climbed wearily over the disturbed ice, tracking the gouges his hammer had made in the Arctic snow. At last he stood next to Mjolnir. He put a hand out towards it, fingers inches away from the handle, but hesitated to call it to him.

He looked around at the icy wasteland. It stretched away in every direction, formless and ancient, reminding him of his home. Suddenly he wanted very much to return to the Island of Lost Toys. To return to Toyland’s isolation. Earth was filled with so much chaos, so much pain.

Everything had so gone so wrong. Thor’s fingers clenched into a fist. He wanted to go home.

~o~o~

The cold always left a searing ache when it finally retreated. In his bones, in his veins, in his head. Frost supposed it must be something like reverse frostbite. He could feel his body warming back up to a semi-human temperature and it was unbearable. He had to force himself to welcome the heat, to push the cold back, inch by inch, until he was in control.

He was lying, as usual, in a massive snowdrift. This time, it was soft, playful snow, but that was just luck. Frost sat up and eyed the remains of a smashed outdoor play-gym, and here and there a ball or garden shovel peeking up out of the snow. He was in someone’s backyard. The air currents swirling high above him felt like southern Europe usually did this time of year.

“Are you Santa Claus?”

Frost looked around quickly at the sound of a child’s voice. There was a house with a raised porch a stone’s throw away. A little dark haired boy was standing on the steps of its porch in his pajamas and green dinosaur slippers. He looked maybe ten or twelve, and had spoken in Italian. Frost had no trouble understanding, even though his talent with languages was not, as rumor had it, a magical perk. He answered in kind.

“No.” Santa Claus. It was almost funny. Frost looked around. It was certainly a large backyard. He could see no other people, no lights in nearby houses, no obvious signs of destruction. “Did I hurt anybody?”

The boy shook his head. “Everyone else on the street goes away for the holidays. Are you sure you’re not Santa Claus?”

Children were persistent little creatures if nothing else. Frost smiled slightly. “I’m sure.”

The boy sighed. “I thought you might be, since he didn’t come yet.”

Frost thought of the North Pole’s undelivered presents, and realized this child was just one of many who were waking up this morning to no gifts from Santa. He tried to remember what had happened in the last few hours, to reassure himself that he hadn’t completely destroyed the North Pole, but couldn’t come up with anything more than brief flashes—a mysterious resentment towards Thor’s hammer, the satisfaction of crumbling a dark stairway, screams… Frost shuddered, realized the boy was talking, and focused on his voice to clear his head.

“I didn’t even ask for a toy or anything. I just wanted a white Christmas. So I could make a snowman.” The child hopped off the porch as he spoke and approached Frost. He patted the snowdrift with a smile. “Like this. So I thought you might be Santa, bringing it.”

Depending on where they were in Italy, the boy might never have had a white Christmas. Back in the day Frost had brought a few to warmer climates, but the child was too young to have seen any of them. The wistfulness in the boy’s tone made Frost ache to help, to be a bringer of white Christmases again…

He looked around at the snow-dusted landscape, noticing that the snow was nearly all melted despite the early morning chill—all of it except the drift in this boy’s yard, where Frost’s presence kept the air bitingly cold. Frost stood up, ignoring his sore muscles, and gestured at the fluffy snow. “You could use this.”

“Won’t it melt?”

Frost sighed. “Not while I’m around.”

The boy’s grin was gratifying, and Frost almost convinced himself that it was possible to be normal, for just this small instant. He sat on the edge of the porch, heading in his hands, trying not to think about anything at all while the boy played in the snow. He managed not to think about what he may have done to the North Pole by mentally listing the people he knew in southern Europe he could beg a ride south from.

Suddenly there was another body sitting next to him and Frost was surprised to look up and see then boy holding two styrofoam cups full of what was probably hot chocolate. When had the kid gone inside?

The boy held out a cup to Frost. “We have a machine, and I can make it all by myself now. I didn’t thing you’d want any until you turned normal again.”

Frost blanched, pulling back slightly. “You saw?”

The child grinned again, broadly enough to show a gap where he was missing a tooth. “Yep. I was up early to look for presents. You were awesome. ”

Awesome was not a word Frost would use to describe the Other Guy. Hesitantly, knowing what would happen, he took the offered cup. The steaming hot chocolate iced over instantly.

“Whoa!” The boy laughed. “That is crazy. Do mine!”

Frost didn’t think he could refuse. He had just smashed the boy’s whole backyard, after all. He ran a finger over the rim of the child’s cup. The boy slurped eagerly at the ice-cold hot chocolate (and wasn’t that ironic?) and Frost followed suit.

“Are you an alien?”

“Hm?”

“From outerspace. Like Buzz Lightyear.”

Buzz Lightyear? Frost figured he must be a little out of touch with modern children. At least urban ones. “No.”

“Then are you like, a superhero or an angel or something?”

The boy’s persistence had been charming before; now Frost found it unnerved him. He wasn’t normal. It had been stupid to pretend he was, even for a moment. Frost was a monster in disguise, and he didn’t want this boy to know that. 

He stood up. “I have to go.” 

~o~o~

In between chaotic flashes of memory and sensation, Clint tried to focus on the hardness of the toy-clamp Annie had him suspended from. He was grateful she had kept him out of medical, grateful she had secured him up in the air, as if he was just perching there like always, instead of desperately trying to hold onto reality. Loki’s face wavered in front of him; he pushed it away.

You’re in the wood-working room, he told himself. Annie is down on the floor watching you.

Another flash, and a wave of dizziness hit him. Colors spun before his eyes like a pinwheel.

Your name is Clint. You’re an elf. You work at the North Pole with Annie. Annie is down on the floor watching you.

Memories teased him: explosions, the twang of his bowstring, voices he couldn’t quite make out.

You’re tied to a toy-clamp in the wood-working room. You can smell wood shavings. Your name is Clint.

“Clint, you’re going to be alright.”

The sound of Annie’s voice was blessedly grounding, but Clint couldn’t help but disagree. “You know that? Ha. Is that what you know?”

“You’ll be okay. Just give it some time.”

“You don’t understand. Have you ever had somebody take your brain and play? Pull you out and put something else in? Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?” Loki’s face replaced the wood-working room, and Clint thought for a moment he was losing it again.

“You know that I do.”

That was true. That was something Clint knew was true and he focused on it, pulling himself back to reality. His Annie used to be Haunted Annie. She had been turned inside out, too, by a vicious toy-maker. She was a toy that had scared children and now he was an elf that had tried to kill Christmas. 

He sighed as the room solidified into normal shapes and colors. “Why am I back? How did you get him out?”

“Cognitive recalibration.”

“Huh?”

“I hit you really hard in the head.” Annie reached for the rope tied to the leg of a table and untied it. Prepared, Clint grasped the toy-clamp as the rope fell away from him. Then he dropped down to the floor.

“Thanks.” The pain in his head made a little more sense, at least. Clint looked around. The entire room was in disarray; he supposed the rest of the North Pole had to look much like it.

“Annie, how much damage did I…?”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “Don’t do that to yourself, Clint.”

Meaning a lot. He wondered if he’d hurt anybody, thinking of how embarrassingly impossible the apologies would be.

“This is Loki. This is war and nothing we were ever trained for.”

It was true. Recon elves were spies, checking on children, occasionally dousing one with tranq dust. They were not soldiers. It didn’t make him feel any better, though. There’s nothing you can do to change the past. Focus on the future, on what you can change.

“Loki. Did he get away?”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose you know where?”

Clint shook his head. “I didn’t need to know; I didn’t ask.” Snatches of memory bubbled to the surface of his mind: the ghost of a conversation. “He’s going to make his play soon, though. Today.”

“We’ve got to stop him.” 

More memories. War was exactly what Loki was looking for, Clint knew, and the North Pole didn’t have any soldiers. They didn’t stand a chance. “Yeah? Who’s ‘we’?”

“I don’t know,” Annie answered sharply. “Whoever’s left.”

Clint caught the familiar determined set of Annie’s mouth. He would go with her, wherever she was going, whatever she was doing. “Well, if I overdosed Loki on tranq arrows, I’d sleep better, I suppose.”

That made smile; she gave him a quick hug. “Now you sound like you.”

“But you don’t. You’re a toy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?” Clint knew there could be only one person to blame. “What did Loki do to you?”

“He didn’t. I just…”

Clint knew Annie’s face well enough to know when she was lying—most of the time, anyway. It wasn’t a big leap to guess what she was thinking, either. They both had transgressions to make up for. “Annie.”

“I got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.”

~o~o~

Tony wasn’t sure what he was doing in the detainment room. The cage was gone. Loki was gone. There was no sign of Phil’s presence—or his death. It was morbid, to be hanging around here, but Tony didn’t leave, not even when he heard Rudolph’s hoofs enter the room behind him.

“Was he married?”

“No. There was an elf in Portland.” Tony realized that knowing the answer to such a question might make it sound like he cared, so he added: “I think.”

“I’m sorry. He seemed like a good person.”

Tony did want to be talking about this. Not right now, and not with Rudolph. He needed desperately to not care. “He was an idiot.”

“Why? For believing?”

“For taking Loki on alone.”

“He was doing his job.”

“It wasn’t worth it.” Tony told himself he was raising his voice because Flashlight-boy annoyed him, and not because he cared. “It’s just a holiday. It’s not worth dying for.”

“Just a holiday?” Rudolph, on the other hand, still managed to sound cool and superior.

“The way Nick celebrates it? Yes.” Addictive toys… It hit too close to home, too close to Tony’s past. This whole night had brought up everything Tony had ever tried to run away from. “Christmas is more than the North Pole, or Santa Claus, or presents.”

“Phil knew that.”

“Then he should have waited. He should have…” Tony didn’t know. He could feel himself flushing; he wanted out of the room, but Rudolph was blocking the door.

“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony.”

“Right, I’ve heard that before.” Tony pushed past the reindeer avoiding his antlers.

“Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?”

Tony whirled around. “We are not soldiers.” He stopped, surprised at his own vehemence. He took a deep breath. “I’m not marching to Nick’s fife.”

“Neither am I. He’s just as guilty as Loki. But right now, we got to put that behind us, and get this done.” 

Tony realized he was right. It was Christmas Day, and Loki was bound to make his move at any moment. His mind raced over the events of the night, analyzing like it was an engineering puzzle.

“Loki needs a power source,” Rudolph began. “If we can put together a list…”

“He made it personal.”

“That’s not the point.”

“That is the point. That’s Loki’s point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?”

“To tear us apart?” Rudy offered, visibly skeptical of this line of hypothesis.

Tony knew he was on to something. “Yeah, divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That’s what he wants. He wants to beat us, and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience.”

The reindeer nodded, catching on. “Right. I caught his act in Stuttgart.”

“Yeah, that was just previews. This is opening night. And Loki, if he’s going to steal Christmas, he’s going to do it in the biggest way possible. He wants wreaths; he wants lights; he wants a monument built to the sky with his name plastered…”

Tony caught Rudolph’s look and stopped. Then he made the connection. Loki wasn’t just going to steal Christmas, he was going steal from the man who already had, a man who already had a monument ready for him.

“The dirty little jerk.” 

~o~o~

When Clint heard footsteps he leapt from the floor to the table to a ceiling beam. A moment later a reindeer came in—Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, of all people. Clint could not remember having seen the living legend recently but he wasn’t surprised to see him approach Annie as if they knew each other. He had a feeling the reason was tucked away in one of the elusive memories of his time under Loki’s control.

“Time to go,” said Rudolph.

“Go where?” Annie asked, giving no indication that Clint was hiding on the ceiling.

“I’ll tell you on the way. We still have that jet?”

Annie shook her head. “I heard Frost knocked it off the landing pad.”

Clint dropped down to the floor as casually as if he had just walked in the door. When the reindeer didn’t flinch, didn’t stare accusingly at him, didn’t visibly tense, Clint offered his two cents: “There’s bunch of passenger-sized reindeer prototypes in storage. Built them after New Mexico for dusting tranq dust over large areas.”

Clint watched as Rudolph looked to Annie, received her nod and looked back at him. Clint steeled himself for some kind of threat.

“You got a suit?”

“Yeah,” Clint replied, surprised.

“Then suit up.”

~o~o~

The blizzard around Thor was rapidly clearing, letting the brilliant starry sky peeking through the clouds. Farther south, Thor knew, the sun was rising on Christmas morning. And somewhere, too, his brother would be opening a portal with the Hourglass, sending magical ripples across the globe.  
Thor couldn’t go home, not without the Hourglass, and not without his brother. Thor could no more give up on Loki than he could give up on Earth. The children here needed Christmas, needed him to save it. Even if he was the only one standing between them and Loki’s army, Thor would still be there.

Mjolnir leapt into Thor’s hand, and he lifted it skyward. Frost had had his turn; Thor was going to make a storm of his own, now.

~o~o~

Rudy met Annie and Clint in the storage bays, giving them a nod as Grinch reported in on the comms. 

“Rebooted the suit. See you slowpokes in New York.”

“We’re right behind you,” Rudy answered. He glanced at Annie and Clint as the latter led them to their ride.

Annie stalked along with an almost predatory purpose; she wore her Santa hat, and her appearance had not changed beyond the addition of a belt of tranq darts, but she looked less like a sweet, innocent toy and more like a weapon. Clint wore a green recon suit and was armed not with tranq guns but a bow and quiver. He carried them with the ease, like they were extension of his body and could move into action as quickly. The elf reminded Rudy of a coiled spring.

An elf further up the corridor spotted them and frowned. Rudy caught his eyes flicking towards Clint.

“You guys aren’t authorized to be in here.”

Rudy stepped forward, and looked down at the elf sternly. There were only a few situations in which Rudy was willing to pull the I’m-a-War-Hero-Don’t-Argue-with-Me card, but this was one of those moments. “Son, just don’t.”

~o~o~

Frost was about to leave the yard when he caught sight of the little Italian boy’s snowman. He froze in place, staring at it.

It was not a snowman. It was a snowmonster.

It was just under a meter high, packed tightly into shape out of the strong, sticky snow. Considering the time the kid had gotten it done in, he had a future as an artist. The snowmonster didn’t have many details, but the ones it did have were vivid. A huge, roaring mouth, with pointy icicle teeth. Large fists, reaching out to grab something. Swirls of texture and little spikes of snow everywhere. 

“Is that me?” Frost said softly, without looking away.

“Do you like it?” the boy said hopefully. “I never made a snowman before…”

Frost knew enough about children to nod immediately, whatever his true opinions were. “It’s beautiful.”

Strangely enough, he wasn’t lying.

~o~o~

St. Nick only lied when he needed to. He was Santa Claus, and he needed to set an example, but he also needed to get things done. So he comprised.

“Nick.”

It was Maria. He’d expected her to call him out. She was very astute; she had to have guessed who turned on the intercom. “Maria.”

“Auld Lang Syne. We usually wait until the funeral to play it.” Her tone held the slightest hint of reproach. Maria was not quite a pragmatic as he was in some ways, and far more pragmatic in others. It evened out; they respected each other.

Nick sighed. “They needed the push.”

Both of their hatcomms suddenly buzzed: “We have an unauthorized launch from the landing pad.” 

Nick wondered idly what on earth Rudolph had found that still worked well enough to launch. “They got it. Get our communications back up, whatever you have to do. I want eyes on everything.”

Maria hesitated, and Nick knew she’d have more say later. “Yes, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note:
> 
> Auld Lang Syne is a New Year's song and is also sung at funerals, which was too poetic for me to pass up.


	11. More Rapid than Eagles

“Max, I told you to get the kids out of the Tower. What’s the hold up? There’s hundreds of them still down there.”

“Eight hundred and sixty-four in the Tower lobby. There are many more still in the surrounding streets. Calling off an event the size of the Times Square New Year’s celebration takes longer than forty-five minutes.”

Tony tore his gaze away from the crowd of people—mostly kids, far too many kids—at the foot of Grinch Tower and took a ninety degree turn to the top of the skyscraper. He’d just have to make sure to stop Loki before anything happened to them. “What’s the status up top?” he asked Max.

“I’ve turned off our power systems, but the device is already self-sustaining.”

Max’s voice fritzed slightly as the suit glitched and lost power for one or two seconds. Tony grimaced; he was a genius, but there was only so much he’d been able to do with the suit after the EMP. He crested the top of the tower and got his first look at the Hourglass. Selvig had ensconced it within a fusion regulator and hooked up several other devices to the top and sides. The apparatus looked far from stable. 

He called out to the elf. “Shut it down, Selvig.”

“It’s too late! She can’t stop now. She wants to show us something.”

The look in Selvig’s eyes was distinctly deranged. Tony rolled his eyes. “Okay.” 

He diverted power to his working blaster and gave the machine a good strike. The shot disappeared just shy of the Hourglass. It didn’t miss; it didn’t rebound—it disappeared. Tony was still trying to figure out where it went when the world around him shifted.

Grinch Tower disappeared, replaced by the building that had been here when Tony bought the land. It was brand new, and a banner on the side advertised 8-tracks. A strange tingling prickled across Tony’s skin. It felt deeply wrong. The world switched back just as quickly; everything was the same. The pricking stopped. Selvig looked woozy for some reason, but the Hourglass remained untouched.

“There seems to be a time flux in effect around the machine,” Max offered helpfully.

Tony blinked several times. “Yeah, got that.” No doubt anything that got too close would find itself flying through time. The machine was effectively unbreachable. Tony looked around for Loki—he would certainly be skulking around somewhere—and spotted him on the penthouse balcony. “Plan B.”

“Sir, the Mark VII is not ready for deployment.”

“Then skip the tinsel. We’re on the clock.”

Tony flew over to his landing pad and let the mechanism strip him of his suit. He walked casually inside, as if everything was completely normal and there wasn’t a smirking murderer following him inside. Said murderer looked incredibly pleased with himself.

“Please tell me you’re going to appeal to my humanity.”

“Well, as you’re a toy, that wouldn’t work, would it?” Tony said, voice far more calm than he thought he’d be able to manage. “I’m actually planning to threaten you.”

“You should have left your armor on for that.”

Loki smiling had to be one of the creepier things Tony had ever seen. He felt a sudden craving for eggnog. He kept his voice casual. “Yeah. It’s seen a bit of mileage, and you’ve got that magic Christmas light on a stick.”—which Loki was twirling in his hand rather unnervingly—“Would you like some eggnog?”

Loki snickered. “Stalling me won’t change anything.”

“No, no, no. Threatening. No drink, you sure? I’m having one.” Tony was not stalling, not really. He just had to find the Mark VII bracelets. Where left them? His eyes scanned the bar; he found a bottle of eggnog and popped the top almost without thinking.

Loki’s tone sharpened. “My army is coming. Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?”

“The Angels.” Tony took a long draft of the eggnog, firmly told himself to chill out, and then smirked at Loki. “It’s what we call ourselves. Sort of like a team. Guardians of childhood, that kind of thing.” 

The bracelets! Tony set down the bottle of eggnog and slipped them on discretely. Alright, now Loki was going to get it.

“Yes, I’ve met them.”

Tony swaggered out from behind the bar. “Yeah, it takes us awhile to get any traction. I’ll give you that one. But let’s do a headcount here: your brother, Prince of Toyland, way stronger than your average action-figure;”--Loki frowned sharply—“a super-reindeer, living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a guy who gives a whole new definition to the term frostbite; a disturbingly dangerous doll and a master recon-elf. And you, big fellow, you’ve managed to tick off every single one of them.”

“That was the plan.”

Tony wanted dearly to blast that smirk off of Loki’s face. “Not a great plan. When they come—and they will—they’ll come for you.”

“I have an army.”

“We have a Snowmonster.”

“Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off?”

“Yeah, you’re missing the point.” Tony strode forward, purposely putting himself in Loki’s space. To his satisfaction, Loki took the smallest step back. “There is no version of this where you win. You can’t kill Christmas. Sure, you can destroy the North Pole and you can steal all the presents but it doesn’t matter. I know. People find a reason to celebrate anyway. You can’t kill an idea. So maybe your army comes and maybe it’s too much for us, but it’s all on you. Because if we can’t save this Christmas you can be damn well sure we’ll make sure you’re not around to ruin the next one.”

Despite having stepped back, Loki was still smirking. He twirled his staff. “How will your friends have time for me, when they’re so busy fighting you?” 

Tony froze. He hadn’t anticipated this and he could do nothing but panic as Loki tapped his staff against Tony’s chest. 

Nothing happened—well, almost nothing. Tony’s skin tone lost a few shades of green, and then another few as Loki tried again. Desire, Tony realized. The spell over-ruled its victims’ desires—and Tony was conveniently cursed with an abundance of strong desire. Tony grinned. Damn, he loved the color green.

“This usually works,” Loki said.

“Guess you’ll have to take it back to the store. Watch out for those return lines. I hear they’re—” Tony’s crowing was interrupted roughly by his impact with the penthouse wall. 

He groaned as he fell to his knees. Loki was apparently not a one-trick toy.

“Max, anytime now,” he gasped, pulling himself to his feet. 

Loki was there to greet him, seizing him by the throat and lifting Tony off his feet. 

“You will all fall before me.” 

Tony saw it coming an instant beforehand and felt himself flush painfully as Loki tossed him through the window and out of the tower. He was falling; the air seemed to tear away from him and he could barely breathe. He forced himself to spread his limbs out. It would slow his fall. The ground rushed up at him anyway.

Come on, Max.

Mark VII wrapped itself around him and came to life without a moment to spare. Tony let his AI drive as he focused on breathing. He didn’t need the warnings on his HUD to tell him that he was in danger of having a stroke if he didn’t calm down. Spots of color exploded in his vision. Breathe. Immunity to the Christmas light stick aside, Tony hated the color green.

Once he could think again he flew up the side of the tower. Loki was peering stupidly over the side. Tony glared down at him. “And there’s one other person you ticked off. His name was Phil.”

Tony launched one of his drone-killers at Loki and watched smugly as it blew him across the balcony. He was about to follow up with a good heavy blast to test out the new suit’s capacity when the tower shook. Tony flew up to the roof, knowing it had to be the Hourglass and dreading, for once, the idea of being right.

Power surged erratically out of the machine, spearing the air around it with sparks. The air took on an odd, visible dissonance, like during a heatwave. Wriggling, opaque shadows peeled off of these irregularities and flitted into the sky. Tony felt an unpleasant weight settle into him. Flashes of memory assaulted him: the crawling sensation and horror as his fair skin changed to green; the last words of a dying man, nearly drowned out by the US drones shrieking overhead—

Tony shook himself out of it, though the sinking feeling did not lessen. Bad memories, Thor had said? He wasn’t kidding. He looked around. There were hundreds of them.

“Army. Right.”

Tony thought of the people down on the streets, of all the kids still in the Tower lobby. Loki meant to destroy their childhoods with these shadows. Tony powered up his blasters and zoomed up to meet one. It did not, as he expected, fly through him. Instead it crashed into him very solidly, and Tony had to push back memories of Gulmira. He fired a blaster at the thing, and it exploded. 

Well, well. It was much better to be fighting tangible enemies than actual shadows. Tony grinned, and let his targeting system point out the nearest dozen shadows.

“Merry Christmas!” he called as they each took an explosive to the gut.


	12. Visions of Sugar Plums

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m back! Merry Christmas!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own The Avengers. Or Christmas, for that matter. All chapters quote heavily from the movie.
> 
> Rating: A shade more kid-friendly than The Avengers.

Thor felt the Hourglass pulse as far away as the Atlantic, and he wasted no time in riding a thunderstorm towards New York. Already the memories were tearing out of the portal and through the city. Thor spotted Loki standing atop a skyscraper and landed next to him, seething with fury.

“Loki! Turn off the Hourglass or I’ll destroy it.”

Loki did not seemed surprised to see him. He smirked, magicking himself into an impressive set of armor. More tricks. Was this still a game to Loki? These children weren’t toys that could be repaired—their childhoods were at stake.

Loki sneered at Thor, radiating confidence. “There is no stopping it. There is only… the war.”

Thor tightened his grip on his hammer. He didn’t have to kill Loki, just stop him. “So be it.”

~o~o~

Either these reindeer had never got past prototyping, or Clint was a really reckless pilot. Annie decided, out of loyalty, that it must be the former, but as Clint lurched another hairpin corner a New York skyscraper she had to admit to herself that the phrases “ludicrously reckless” and “overconfident hot-head” had been applied to him more than once before. Annie herself was clutching one of the handholds on the tiny passenger platform with both hands; the other handhold anchored a length of rope that was towing Rudolph, who, for all his legendary status, could not match the speed of the mechanical reindeer and was probably even more uncomfortable than she was.

Reckless or not, Clint did get the three of them to Grinch Tower only a few minutes behind the Grinch. The massive disturbance clawing out towards the sky from the tower’s apex made it evident that Loki had already activated the Hourglass portal. Annie watched the flitting shadows for signs of the Grinch as Clint angled the reindeer up towards the portal. A flash here, a burst of light there—Grinch and his prey were moving too fast.

There were hundreds of them, Annie thought morbidly. Too many to count, but obviously an unbeatable amount. They made her skin crawl. She glanced back at Rudolph and caught his eye. No words were spoken; none could have been heard over the chaotic screaming of the shadows and the humming portal. She untied Rudolph’s tow rope and he shot off towards the nearest bunch of shadows.

Then Annie touched her hatcomm—better keep it on from this point forward. “Grinch, we’re on your three. Rudy’s coming up to meet you.

 The Grinch sounded slightly breathless and definitely agitated: “What, did you stop for milk and cookies?”

Annie shielded her eyes as one of Grinch’s drone killing explosives and the bright flash of Rudy’s nose lit the sky simultaneously. Red and green together… how festive, Annie thought dryly.

“I’ve got it up here,” Grinch told them. “You three have to get the kids away from the Tower.”

Clint angled for the Tower but didn’t drop his altitude. Annie knew he preferred to get a bird’s-eye view of a situation before diving in like a hawk. Below them, children and their accompanying adults scattered the street, pouring out of the Grinch’s Tower’s lobby, all of them disorganized and vulnerable. It was clever of Loki to target the Grinch Giveaway, Annie had to admit. She just hoped that his corresponding cockiness might give them an opening with which to salvage this Christmas.

They leveled with the lower balcony of the Tower—already some of it had been blasted away by the battle. Just beyond the huge stylized GRINCH letters, off which R and H were missing, Loki and Thor were fighting on the balcony. It was impossible to tell who had the upper-hand. The two Toylanders moved to fast to track.

Annie felt the reindeer veer with Clint’s attention from the children below to the balcony as he flew them closer to Loki.

Annie jogged his shoulder: “Clint. Later.”

She wasn’t surprised when he ignored her; nor could she really blame him. Loki had a lot to answer for, and Annie could only guess at the damage he’d done to her best friend. Clint let go of the controls without warning in order to reach for his bow, but Annie was right there to catch them, like always. She kept the reindeer machine hovering steady as Clint aimed at Loki.

Unfortunately, Loki caught sight of them and shot a deadly bolt of magic their way. Annie veered immediately, trying to dodge, but a mere instant later their reindeer prototype started spluttering and the controls stopped responding. They were hit. They began to spiral downwards towards the cold, hard street below. “Rudy!”

Let him catch them, let him catch them, let him catch—Annie found herself jerked upward sharply as her wish was answered. Not a moment too soon, either: the reindeer prototype crashed onto the top of a suburban just a few a few stories below, leaving Annie and Clint dangling awkwardly from Rudy’s antlers.

Weighed down and thrown off-balance by his two passengers, Rudy’s landing was less than gentle, but they were all unhurt, at least. Annie got to her feet and surveyed the city around them—everything from cars to people towered skyward, reminding Annie just how small she and Clint were. It was easy to forget that the human world was huge, and everything human’s built was huge, even for them. Annie grabbed hold of one of Rudy’s legs to stop him from taking to the skies once more. “We’ve lost our ride” she told him. “We need you ground level. New York City was never designed for toys and elves.”

Suddenly Annie felt an unpleasant prickling sensation dance up her spine and along her neck. It was tingly-hot, slimy and reminded her of dark closets. She had to take a moment to stifle the unwanted memory of a red room filled with shelves of broken toys, to bury it back down where she didn’t have to think about it. Annie glanced around, feeling hunted by old ghosts, and saw that Clint and Rudy both looked as sick as she felt.

“It’s the shadows,” Rudy said grimly. “Closer they get, the worse it is.”

“Or the larger they are…” Clint murmured. He was not looking at them, but up at the sky where the shadows were emerging from the disturbance created by the Hourglass. Annie followed his gaze and stiffened as she caught sight of a huge, writhing black shadow, easily a hundred times the size of any of the others. It twisted and coiled towards the city like an unhealthy cross between a serpent and a tornado. Unlike its fellows, it was completely opaque. As it descended on the skyscrapers, little shadows leapt off of it to latch onto nearby buildings.

“Grinch, you seeing this?” Rudy asked.

Grinch’s reply rang out through their hatcomms: “Feeling would be a better word. It’s like getting coal in your stocking and having to eat it.” That was as good an analogy as any, Annie thought _._ “Where’s Frost? Has he shown up yet?”

Memories of knife-sharp icicles stabbed at Annie’s vision. In what universe would they possibly want the Abominable Snowman here?

“Frost?” Rudy’s tone indicated that he thought it unlikely that the winter spirit would show up. That was fine with Annie.

Grinch huffed impatiently. “Just keep me posted.”

~o~o~

Loki fought dirty. Thor knew this from their younger days, and he also knew that often the only way to overpower Loki when he was desperate was to use Loki’s fragility against him. Loki was like jagged glass—dangerous, but breakable. The problem was that Thor didn’t know if he could bring himself to break Loki.

Instead he parried Loki’s unyielding attacks and tried to find an opening he could use to trapped Loki without hurting him permanently. Here and there he swung Mjolnir at Loki’s staff, which had proven to be just as resilient at Thor’s hammer. The two weapons nearly canceled each other out.

Loki shot a blast of the Hourglass’s magic at him and Thor brought Mjolnir up just in time to block it. It ricocheted outward and knocked one of the letters off the front of the tower. Thor hoped it would not fall on anyone.

In a stroke of luck, Thor managed to disrupt Loki’s footing and knock him back against the wall. Thor pinned him there with his own weight and gestured out at the city. “Look at this! Look around you! You think this madness will end with you?”

Loki’s eyes danced over the scenes of destruction and chaos erupting all around them. He seemed strangely awestruck. Perhaps, Thor thought, he was coming to his senses.

“It’s too late,” Loki breathed. “It’s too late to stop it.”

Thor turned Loki’s face towards his own, forced Loki to look him in the eye. Was his brother still there somewhere, amidst all the chaos and pain? “No, we can. Together.”

Please let him see, Thor begged.

Suddenly Thor’s vision was aflash with hot, gritty stinging energy—from Loki’s staff. Thor staggered back, feeling a huge surge of exhaustion settle in his bones. He was lucky he was a toy, and not as susceptible to age as his mortal allies, or else he might be dead. Thor’s grip on Mjolnir loosened and failed; his hammer dropped to the ground. Loki sneered, perhaps disappointed the staff had not hurt Thor more.

Thor felt cold and tired. Was that his brother?

“Sentiment,” Loki spat.

Thor let his temper bubble to life, let it warm him again and bring him new strength. Loki to lost to him. If it was impossible to handle Loki, Thor would have to destroy him. Brother, Thor thought grimly, your tricks may make you hard to hit, but when you are hit, you shatter.

Thor lunged toward Loki, surprising him with sudden ferocity, and seized him roughly. He smashed Loki into a window, shattering it, and then thrust him to the balcony floor. As Thor summoned his hammer, Loki rolled away—and off the tower’s edge.

Thor sprinted to the edge, frightened in spite of himself and peered over in time to catch sight of Loki landing one of his infernal shadows. It solidified, morphed into a sleek flying contraption, and carried him away from the tower.

Thor raised his hammer to the sky and summoned more lightning. Loki would not get away that easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Angels Assemble!


	13. A Right Jolly Old Elf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Clint gets some screen-time here.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own The Avengers. Or Christmas, for that matter. All chapters quote heavily from the movie.
> 
> Rating: A shade more kid-friendly than The Avengers.

Clint eyed a posse of shadows fanning out along the street to corner them. The shadowy black monsters were memories, Clint was pretty sure. He didn’t know if this certainty came from his own intuition of was a holdover from his time with Loki…

Clint shook the thought off, using a bolt through the center of a shadow to clear his focus. More were coming.  The shadows swooped and leapt from the sides of buildings, snatching at children and people as they ran shrieking. Adults couldn’t see them like the children could but were obviously affected just as strongly, losing track of their children or succumbing to “random” bursts of panic as a pack of shadows flew by. Yes, Clint was pretty sure he understood: the shadows induced flashbacks to the worst memories of the person they touched.

Annie and Rudy shuddered as the three of them dashed across an intersection to take cover behind a stalled semi-truck. The driver was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckled fists and staring at nothing. Clint passed just as close as the others, felt the creeping unease… but he wasn’t assaulted by any flashbacks. Clint pulled an arrow, attached a flashing charge to it and smiled as he shot it into the center of the posse. His time with Loki landed solidly in the “worst memories” category—and he couldn’t remember any of it.

“Merry Christmas!” he said as the shadows were swallowed up in light.

Clint shifted to retake his natural position at Annie’s side. She and Rudy were peering down the street towards Grinch Tower. Just visible through the chaos of the street was the horde of children trapped in the plaza and lobby, with nary a handful of adults to watch them, as if they’d be any help anyway.

“They’re fish in a barrel down there!” Rudy said.

Clint swept his own gaze around the intersection. There was a family trapped in a little hybrid across the street. “Got some fish of our own right here.”

Annie shifted closer to him; they shared a nod. “We got this,” she said to Rudy. “It’s good. Go.”

Rudy evidently hadn’t caught their wordless exchange and asked Clint: “Think you can hold them off?”

Clint grinned widely, and his smile was a little too malicious to belong on the face a cheerful little elf. This soldier business wasn’t as bad as it looked. Here he was, out in broad daylight kicking butt with a legendary reindeer and his best partner with a truly excellent new bow and lots of new gadgets—upgraded courtesy of Loki.  “It would be my genuine pleasure.”

With that, Clint drew a flash arrow, armed it, aimed and fired at the air of shadows crouching on top of the hybrid in about three seconds. The light obliterated them and scattered others nearby. Clint didn’t bother to watch Rudy; he was probably already gone. Annie had leapt out from their cover behind the semi and begun flinging darts at the shadows. Clint wasting half a second watching her scale the side of a streetlamp and jump onto an unfortunate shadow before ripping into it with her bare hands. In addition to light, enough physical damage seemed to take the shadows down, though it was possible they were just dissolving to reform somewhere else.

That was a sobering thought. What if they weren’t even destroying the shadows?

Two little shrieks reminded him that there were children in peril. Clint ran over to the car and pulled open the door—slowly, it was twice his height—to reveal a father and two twin girls. All of them were terrified. Clint turned on what little charm he had and motioned for the girls to unbuckle.

“Let’s play a game, girls. We can go down in the subway to play.”

Wide Brown eyes stared at him but the girls didn’t respond. Clint hid the prick of nervousness crawling along his neck as a passing shadow grew interested in them. He needed to change tactic. These girls looked like Lego girls… elves had a sixth sense about presents. Clint swung up into the car and sat between the girls, hands restless on his bow. “What did you ask Santa for Christmas, huh?”

The girls sparkled slightly to life. “Legos…”

Clint watched the approaching shadow out of the corner of his eye, focusing on the girls’ Christmas spirit like it was a fire he couldn’t let flicker out. “And have you been good this year?”

Nothing like familiar rote words to comfort a child against the frightening unknown. The girls crack little shy pearly smiles, nodding vigorously.

Clint smiled conspiratorially at them. “Well, I’ll tell Santa.”

Clint climbed nimbly into the front seat, bringing the girl’s excitement with him and using it—like he might use a touch of elf magic to whisper under a locked door—to remind their father of the Lego set he just had to buy them… right now. In fact, he had better just get out of the car and take the subway.

“Come on,” the adult said, still distracted. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” The girls lit up like decorated trees.

As soon as their father opened his door, Clint shot the approaching shadow, and herded all three humans quickly towards the nearest subway. There was, in Clint’s opinion, nothing more mundane than a subway. Even if the shadows followed the human underneath the city, they would not have as much effect in such a boring, normal space. Unless the lighting failed. Then things would get bad.

Once the children and their father were safely out of the way, Clint returned to Annie’s side, taking out several shadows as he did so. They worked together, an effortless team, but for every shadow they vanquished another two showed up a moment later.

They leap over a stalled car to take cover and are surprised to see a shadow hiding there. Annie swipes an arrow from Clint’s quiver and drives it in its neck—well, neck-like extremity. Clint didn’t think memories or shadows had necks. Nevermind.

Annie smirked at him. “This is just like Budapest all over again.”

Clint raised an eyebrow at her. He glanced around with exaggerated motions, noting the absence of both maniacal nut-crackers and ninja ballerinas. “You and I remember Budapest very differently.”

* * *

 

Rudy’s progress towards Grinch Tower was slow. Too slow. Every time he took off he would spot a gang of shadows creeping up on someone, or see them tearing at a car to get at the civilians inside. He had to stop. Luckily one bright flash of his nose could take out several at once.

Still, he was a block away from Grinch Tower at least.

Suddenly, Rudy caught sight of a sparkling light and heard the unnaturally loud clinking of spilled coins and shouting. He slowed and dropped towards the source of the sound. After a moment he recognized the shouting—a Gaelic dialect mixed with a Jersey accent. The speaker was swearing profusely.

Had to be a leprechaun, then.

Rudy grinned in spite of the situation as he landed next to a scruffy leprechaun, who was arguing with a much smaller, daintier figure. “I’ve been woke too early, lost half my bleeding gold and been harassed by meshuganah shadows, I ain’t—l”

“But the World Holiday Council has to know what’s going on here!” It was a tooth fairy, probably caught by surprise by the attack as she was doing her rounds, just like the leprechaun, Rudy thought.

“Missy, do _we_ even know what in St. Patty’s name is going on?”

The fairy paled.

Rudy, with the beginnings of an idea forming between his antlers, decided to announce his presence. “Someone’s trying to kill Christmas. If you two are trying to get off the island, you need to take as many children as possible with you. Rainbows, portals, whatever you have. Get them down in the subways, off the streets. Miss, if you can get your sisters to help—”

“Wait a minute! I didn’t sign up for nothing! Who are you?” demanded the leprechaun.

Rudy let his nose glow dimly. “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.”

The fairy gasped, covering her mouth with a tiny hand. The leprechaun, on the other hand, was not impressed. “What’s that to me? Why should I worry about Christmas? You Yule folks get all the attention anyway.”

“How long do you think the other holidays will last if Christmas goes? What happens to your gold, Patty, if kids stop believing in you?”

The leprechaun hesitated, looking anxiously around. Then his gruffness returned. “Well, I wouldn’t care exceptin’ they turned up in New York. The nerve of it, coming into _my_ town…”

“We’ll help,” the tooth fairy told Rudy.

Rudy smiled. Help was good. Maybe they could do this after all. “Merry Christmas,” he told them.

“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled the leprechaun. He heaved his bag of gold onto his shoulders and waved at the fairy. “Lead the way, Twinkle Toes.”

* * *

 

Tony careened around a corner, trying to keep up with the monstrously huge shadow that had just pulled itself from Loki’s portal. It wasn’t moving too fast relative to its size, but it was literally so big that just moving one body length put it far ahead of Tony.

“More power, Max.”

“Sir, we are already reaching dangerously high levels of expenditure…”

Tony’s attention flicked to the power readout on his HUD. He wished he’d had more time to prep the new suit. He wished he’d had time to analyze these shadows and find their weaknesses instead of just blindly shooting at them. He wished—Stop that, Tony told himself. Wishing did him no good and raised his blood-pressure dangerously.

Tony swooped in close to the side of the megashadow, trying to block out the despair that seeped into his bones as he got close. Lots of time for flashbacks later. After saving Christmas. His aim wavers, and Max, who presumably doesn’t suffer from emotional instability, has to correct Tony’s aim.

Tony sends a barrage of shots into the side of the megashadow. At first they seem to have no effect, but then the shadow slows and turns, orienting on Tony. His blood runs cold and he’s sure he can hear screams of pain that never sounded in New York City but far away in the desert. Max is calmly but insistently warning him about his blood pressure readings.

“Well,” Tony says, sluggishly shaking off the shadow’s chilling effect. He turned and zoomed off, not fast enough to lose the monster but hopefully fast enough not to get eaten—or whatever. “We got its attention. What was Step 2?”

* * *

 

Clint really hoped someone had a plan here. He was wrestling on eth ground with a shadow, having been separated briefly from his bow. He wasn’t sure he was doing any good, taking these things down one by one. Most of the time he was on the defensive anyway. Clint reached back to rip an arrow out of his quiver and stabbed through the most opaque section of the shadow with it. He barely waited for the shadow to finish dissolving before he rolled away, grabbed his bow from the street, and knocked another shadow upside the head with it. He turned back towards Annie just in time to shoot at a shadow sneaking up on her. Annie smirked at him and threw her last dart inches past Clint’s head to knock out another shadow behind him.

They were a good team.

Annie was looking stressed, stretching thin by constant exposure to the shadow’s unpleasant magic. Clint knew he was starting to feel it more strongly too. They met the next wave of shadows back to back. Annie appropriated an arrow to slash at shadows with; she was the only person Clint would let get away with touching his quiver or bow. Before the real nastiness could start, a red flash vaporized the nearest shadows.

Clint and Annie shifted automatically to let Rudy land next to them. They all three share a grim look before facing up the shadows again. Clint braced himself as more shadows surrounded them. The bad memories pulled at him relentlessly.

Suddenly, lightning struck all of the surrounding shadows and Thor landed amongst them. He stumbled a bit, Clint noted, so he was wearing out just they were. Clint decided that Thor was even cooler up close than he had been in New Mexico, with the hammer and the lightning… “That was freaking neat.”

Thor grinned, a little surprised maybe at the compliment. Clint caught Annie rolling her eyes at him, but he knew she appreciated the small release of tension.

Rudy was all business. “What’s the story upstairs?”

“The power surrounding the Hourglass is impenetrable,” Thor answered.

Their comms came to life as the Grinch added his two cents:  “Thor’s right. We got a deal with these things.”

That was really the plan Clint had been hoping for.

Annie said, “They’re wearing us down pretty fast…”

Everyone knew what she meant. The shadows were hard to fight because they made you not want to fight—except, Clint thought, when he had been fighting with Annie. “It’s better when you’re not alone. It grounds you.”

The look in Annie’s eyes told Clint she didn’t get it. “We’re already together.”

Clint caught Rudy’s eye next. The reindeer got it; he was a soldier. “But we’re not together, as a team. That’s how we have to do this.”

“I have unfinished business with Loki,” Thor said.

Clint eyed him. Was the Toylander going to be a problem? “Yeah? Get in line.”

Rudy cut between them both. “Save it. Loki’s going to keep this fight focused on us, and that’s what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We got Grinch up top. He’s going to need us to…”

Rudy trailed off. Next to Clint, Annie stiffened and he followed both their gazes. A dark-haired human—no, wait, not human—was picking his way up the street towards them. He was in warm clothes but barefoot, and ice formed on the street and the debris as he passed. His hair was frozen in an unruly mess. It had to be Jack Frost. He looked perfectly calm to Clint, even a little tired already, but looking closer, Clint thought he noticed a bit of a sparkle in the man’s eyes.

Rudy stepped forward, hesitantly. “Mr. Frost, are you…?”

“Under control? Perfectly.” Frost looked around. His fingers tapped restless at his sides. Clint noticed that Annie was still as stiff as a plastic Barbie at his side. “This all seems horrible.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Annie said.

Clint glanced between the two of them. Frost looked penitent, and Clint wished he’d had a chance to be filled in on whatever this backstory was.

“Sorry.”

“No, we could use a little worse.”

At that, Frost’s penitent look disappeared; he smirked, as if something in him was coming alive. “I hope you brought a sweater.”

“Grinch, we got him,” Rudy said.

“Frost?”

“Just like you said.”

“Then tell him to suit up. New York’s overdue for a white Christmas, and I’m bring the party to you.”

Clint was the first to catch sight of the Grinch, rounding the corner a couple blocks away. He was pursued by the megashadow. Clint braced himself for a wash of misery but instead the air temperature dropped more quickly than a present knocked off the edge of the North Pole. Clint immediately turned his attention to Frost. He didn’t remember much from Frost’s file, but what Clint was seeing now was a distinct bounce in Frost’s step as he turned toward the megashadow. A moment later Tony landed next to Clint.

“I don’t see how that’s a party,” Annie muttered.

“Mr. Frost,” Rudy said, “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

Frost stopped walking and spun back towards them, arms wide in a carefree gesture. He was grinning, and Clint was now sure that the glint in his eyes was nothing but predatory. Framed by approaching shadow, Frost looked kind of insane. Clint remembered suddenly that the man was originally from Siberia, and back in the day had reportedly took great pleasure in giving the place the deadliest winters on the planet.

“That’s the secret, Rudy. Winter is always angry. Always has been.”

The megashadow was nearly on him now, zooming low over the street. Frost turned, transforming in one fluid motion into a hulking Snowmonster and roared. As if he had exploded, ice and snow erupted radially out from him, climbing up the nearby building for fifty or sixty feet. Wind blew from every direction, swirling around the Abominable Snowman and lifting him off the ground. The megashadow tried to morph around him, but the Snowmonster covered it in ice and hurled it over his head and into the street.

Clint ducked behind the Grinch, hoping his suit was enough to block the incoming debris as the ice and shadow shattered. Shadows on the surrounding building screamed at them all. The vehemence of their shrieks sends waves of misery at them, and Clint gasped as they hit him with pummeling force. He glanced at the others, unsurprised to see them similarly affected—except for the Snowmonster, who was cackling at the shadows.

Clint had an idea. It was probably a bad one, and since Annie made him promise a long while back to think things through first, he debated the idea for about three seconds. Yep, definitely a bad one. Clint made the call to try it anyway. He sprinted over to stand next to Frost—Frost, rather than the Abominable Snowman, because Clint wasn’t entirely sure they were two separate beings. Winter _was_ destructive, angry, dangerous… just as much as it was playful and beautiful. Maybe separating the two had been a bad idea.

As Frost looked down at Clint, he wondered maybe if _this_ had been a bad idea. He couldn’t run away or dodge properly because the ice on the street made his footing too unsure. There was no going back. Clint gave Frost a thumbs-up. “Good job, buddy.”

Frost stomped a giant foot in place, and a stream of ice ran from the point of impact all the way up a nearby building to spear a shadow. Clint decided it a signal of truce. The ice under Clint feet began melting as the Grinch landed next to him. Clint nodded in thanks and received one back. They stood ready, watching the shadows back to back. Then Thor and Rudy joined their little circle. Thor’s hammer sparked and sizzled with shards of lightning that stood Clint’s hair on end, and Rudy’s nose cast a red glow on the street around them.

Rudy catches Clint eye. “Good idea.”

Clint looked around for Annie and caught sight of her just as a rolling buffet of snow swept her off her feet and carried her over to Frost. Her face screws up in fright momentarily until he buries it; it happens so quickly Clint doubts anyone else would have seen it. Annie looked up and Frost, crossing her arms.

“I’m still not afraid of you.”

Frost laughed, as if he understood completely—not just the words but also that Annie was lying. Clint was impressed; he was usually the only one who could decode Annie. Annie stalked over to stand next to Clint.

The shadows screamed at them once more, but this time, it didn’t feel so bad. Clint knew the others felt it too.

“As a team,” Thor said.

“As Angels,” Rudy corrected.

Clint grinned. Suddenly saving Christmas no longer seemed impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: So, because of Real Life, this could not be finished this year. It will be continued when next the Christmas spirit hits me. May 2016 be good to you and to me!


End file.
